Classic Poem

Ah, me! what brave content pervades the storm!
How the wind whistles, and outdoes the arts
In raising cornices along the wall!
Or when the gray destroyer from the East
Drives up his frozen troops in cutting sleet,
I feel the thankful chant, that, truly here,
" In these flat pastures and prosaic plains,
Life still has joys, because it still has pains. "
Then o'er our upland swells, it cheers to roam,
Where the audacious blast chants loud its hymn,
And the insolent squalls roll by, resolved
To force us downward. Soon, once more below
Into the shelter of the groves I sink,
Delighted with the lee. Of these rich joys,
None can defraud us; and I thank the kind,
That, on our fields dim-moving, — life of fear!
Yet seize their spoil of freedom, — chosen times,
When the tormentor, Man, is barred within;
Then, in the revels of the storm-clad powers,
The howling east or the tempestuous south,
They sally forth contented, and become
Lords of the puny land again, itself
Their own.

Somewhat of this and higher laws
Once brought a hermit to the lowly bank
Of one of these poor ponds that glaze our fields,
Where, for a season, he might quaff the wine
Of nature in full piquancy, and thus
Become well satiate with it. Partly for this, —
Because our man kept other crusade high
Beyond all I pursue; strains of mad faith
And thin tradition rocking in his dream
With their distracting creatures, and afloat
Setting good part of all things sane he knew.
Yet in his stupid moments he half loved
The generous Giver that o'erflowed his cup,
And gave his droning talent chance to shoot;
Filled out his sandy life with our stray pond;
Sought him gay color for his sunset walk,
And morning-lights that were not made in vain,
And icy moonlight, life's true portraiture,
And his own dreadful faith, that praised itself.
Here on the shore, where I more often tread
In the cold season, this conformer dug,
And built a scanty lodge to bar the cold;
For even he, much as he loved tradition,
Never could heat his limbs with ritual Bibles,
But struck up a fire.

I loved to mark him,
So true to Nature. In his scanty cabin,
All along the walls, he hid the crevice
With some rustic thought, — a withered grass,
Choice-colored blackberry-vines, and nodding sedge
Fantastically seeded; or the plumes
The golden-rod dries in the fall; and tops
Of lespedeza, brown as the Spanish name;
And velvet bosses quaintly cut away
Off the compliant birches, of whose trunks
This hermit blest made pillage. Here he sat,
The most contented hermit on the earth,
Full of glad sounds, and full of pleasant thoughts,
Delighted with the village and the pond,
And with himself, the darling of the whole.

Aside from all the jaundice he had caught
From the seducing past, I think he dwelt
As near to nature's heart as most who breathe;
Nor robust woodman, and the sallow tribe
Of dreaming poets or thin writing folk,
Enjoy more comfort in their lonely life.
True, the traditions of the race still ticked
Like spiders in the web, shut in his ears;
And still he heard that drumming in his dreams,
And schemed reforms to agitate the earth
With penny wisdom, and insure the peace.
Yet oft he fed the titmice from his hand;
And the old, cautious muskrat, who, behind
This hermit's hut, had built himself a house,
Felt no alarm at him who daily left
An alms at his back-door, and kept the faith.
When the short winter-days ran rapid out,
If clear the air, he heard the small pond sing
Its well-known strains of pleasure and of praise,
As on the strings of an Æolian lyre;
And saw the sentry pines that fringe the east
Erect their emerald tips along the eve,
While all the singular fibres of the pond
Kept on their whining music.

In those times,
Rarely there passed his door some of those friends
That here survive the downfall of their strength, —
The old inhabitants, the moles and mice;
Perchance upon his roof scenting the stores
Of frugal wheat and corn there left to cool, —
Grains that he ground united, for himself,
In a spent mill, upon his theory,
(For surely he had such a thing, and kept
A theory, on which he lived and moved
And had his being,) slept and sang and piped.
Why should he not? Have we not all some such,
Howe'er we strive to hate it? — a bequest
Of lean tradition from dead yesterdays,
Less wise than this good soul's. Dearly he prized
The hungry winter-nights, when owlets sang,
And pale above the moon careered in heaven,
To such as he a phantom of delight!
And when he heard the frost crack in the tree,
Fancying some ghostly fabled beast come forth
To mock at nature's patience and reserve,
This hermit bawled such ballads to the stars,
The wintry fields, and all the depth of snow,
And that cold, staring moon, that nature's self
Came out to hear his cry, and sat half pleased.

Not always went he lonely; for his thought
Retained the touch of one whose guest he was, —
A large and generous man, who, on our moors
Having built up his thought (though with an Indian tongue,
And fittest to have sung at Persian feasts,
Or been the prince of Afric, or the lord
Of all the genii in the Arab chant),
Still dwelt among us as the sage he was;
Sage of his days, patient and proudly true,
Whose word was worth the world, whose heart was pure,
Type of our best ancestrals, English blood
Drawn down in generous measures from the race
Whom Sidney, Milton, and the others knew,
The pious Herbert with the saintly Vaughan,
And splendid Shakspeare, playing Nature's game.
Oh, such a heart was his! no gate or bar;
The poorest wretch that ever passed his door
Welcome as highest king or fairest friend
To all his store, and to the world beside.
And in his tent sometime our hermit sat,
Listening discourse most welcome from the dame
Rarest in shooting darts of wit and love,
Such as most hermits prize.

This English man
(Seldom the hermit's guest) of whom I spake
Could much admire the skill from which he drew
With his small sources those adornments rare,
His curious emblems, — as a blue-jay's wing
Found on my path, a votive from the skies;
Or with the pensile cranberry redly-bright,
Or the less frequent yew's delightful fruit,
Whose coral drops surpass the lustrous blush
Of Southern rubies. Surely this hermit
In his plain-kept hut shaped out a mystery
Deserving of repute, nothing his means, —
Mere straws or stems, some o'erspent Johnswort flowers,
And quaint anomaly of pitch pine cones,

But how could him that hermit quite content,
Creature of custom? Such the spell of love!
A loving heart supplies the occasion ripe.
For if the genius of all learning flamed
Aloft in those pure eyes: if never hour,
Nor e'en the smallest instance of his times,
Could ever flit, nor give that soul reward;
Yet in his sweet relations with his race
Pure mercy lived. He held his noble wealth
For others, as a pearl of rare device,
If set to enterprise in scholar's tasks,
And so less imminent to common life.
But, oh! his goodliness, as that hermit knew:
The merest waif from nothing cast upon
The shores of this rich heart became a gem,
So regal then its setting. I have marked
The silliest apes, the fops of fashion, stand
And think themselves lord arbiters of fate,
Raised by the polished methods of this soul
To rarer problems than their half-done brains
E'er doubted; seen the choughs and cuckoos swell
To bursting, and march off, immoderate.