Classic Poem

Not always this.
My words are frenzy; none can feel them here;
This corse a prey to the green mold, to dust.
Here may the wild-cat crouch and suck my veins,
And the slow snake, the Massasauga, coil
About my throat, or drag his rattles o'er
My harmless bones. I never injured him,
Nor touched his race, no more than if his form
Had been my clannish totem ; yet methinks,
So wild is Nature, or so self-sustained,
She shows no difference to the cruelest boor

And him who tends her creatures like his own.
At times I seem to swim along the past,
Yet without pleasure; grief's too near. Could I
But plunge beneath that golden dream, and sleep
Upon the pillow of forgotten days!
I seem to see the city by the shore,
Sullen and tame, where laps the Atlantic wave;
Her gloating palaces, her scornful mites
Hating the poor, but loving much the rich.
Was there a breath of judgment in this world,
That senseless wrack of misers and buffoons
Flung to the simmering billows, served far more
As driftwood to the naked islander,
Crushed in his wrecker's cabin, than 't is now, —
A prison of the soul, where genius dies,
Love withers, and all 's damned.

I do but dream!
Methinks I see the hill-tops round me swell,
And meadow vales that kiss their tawny brooks,
And fawn the glittering sands that hug the grass;
Old valleys shorn by farmers numerous years,
Some mossy orchards murmuring with perfume,
And our red farm-house, — what a wreck that was! —
Its rotten shingles peeling 'neath the winds,
When roaring March fell in the offshore breeze;
Its kitchen with the salt box full of eggs,
And Taylor's " Holy Living " on the lid;
And clammy cellar, redolent of rats,
Had not Grimalkin bought his ticket there,
Braced on lean vermin like a banker's clerk.

Our parlor kept its buffet , rarely oped.
Much did I wonder at yon glassy doors,
And stacks of crockery sublimely piled, —
Hills of blue plates, and teapots sere with age,
And spoons, old silver, tiniest of that breed.
It was a sacred place, and save I whisked
Sometimes a raisin or a seed-cake thence,
With furtive glance I scanned the curious spot.
The curtains to the windows kept all dark, —
Green paper was the compound. And the floor,
Well scrubbed, showed its vacuities, content
With modest subterfuge of mats, the work
Of some brave aunt, industrious as a fly,
And interwove of rags, yet things to me
I hardly dared intrude on them my shoe.
Such fictions of that past, to-day seem naught;
And there prefigured lay the ruthless crimes

That later years have summed up in my count,
Made me the outlaw of these thick-set woods,
And bribed the solitude to craze my brain.
Within, within; for things without are void.
I can remember, on my path to school,
There was upon the road a ledge of rocks,
And on its side red stains. I thought them blood,
And shuddered when I passed, and sometimes ran,
Ploughed in my conscience by a glittering pang.
Yet then I was unhappy, my thoughts sad;
My heart was soft, I was not loved enough;
I felt all tender impulse; but without,
I found dull answers or averted looks, —
The pale, the selfish, and the worldly crowd
Who block the paths of life, and drop their slime
Along the doorways, and bar hope away.

My heart was made to love. I loved the trees;
The livelong fields, slow slumbering 'neath the sun;
The barberry thickets, where the cat-bird builds;
And the green privet's shade, the robin's house.
I loved the long, low beach that kept the shore;
The eternal billow, turning in its dream;
The sparkling keip, slow-moving thro' the spray,
And the small beach-birds, piping their faint hymn
Amid the cannon of the o'erhanging brine.
I loved the tall white clouds that the blue hills
Around my birthplace took to Heaven with them,
And sailed away upon that azure vault
Till hours made centuries.
And fain I loved
The victories of the mind, that fervent pens
Secured in verse or rhyme; idols to some,
Butts for the jest or jeer; the students' tale,
Read crouching o'er the fire in still mid-night,
And poring o'er their books to give the race
Dominion, not themselves. And art became
A passion to my soul; and they who taught
In lands Italian or in Grecian fanes,
Discoverers to cold Nature of herself;
Wheel within wheel, fresh beauty still evolved,
As from the rushing sea sprang Venus forth,
And smiled, till the blue bays grew golden,
And shrines melodious gave soft music forth.
But how chill my race to my emotions!
For such as I encountered most each day,
Low-bent and shrunk, their narrow fore-heads carved

Deep by their avarice, scanning each word,
Ringing their twopence on the grocer's weight,
Always the leading quest, " What will you do? "
And " How much can you make? "
I spake of verse,
I praised the master-minds, I praised their works.
Were not great poets something, artists naught?
Dante's dark dream, and flowing Shakespere's light,
And sweet Correggio swooning in his saint,
And Newton gazing like the stars he told!
" Fool! " was the word; " fool, go read the almanac,
Teach you to multiply and foot your sums,
Learning is rank confusion. Science swims
Upon the floating gulf-weed, and its dream
Flies at the tempest which devours its strand. "

There lived a few who laid a claim to me,
Who cried: " This world is vain; here conscience falls
To meanness. Set down your priest, your advocate,
With carp and venison plump his greedy skin,
On couches soft rear his luxurious sleep,
And bring congestion from voluptuous wines, —
That is what science means; to us not that.
Time hath a higher meaning to our hearts.
You can foot a rhyme; chant the right thing, the Good,
Sing friendship, praise the scholar's life, the poet's. "
Thus did they brag, and then showed me their gums.
Accursed rot their treacherous, craven breed!
Worshippers of success, idols to themselves,
Bound in conventions, who keep up the church,
And cut each sour malignant who prefers
His unwashed cant to their soaped liturgies.
Such fancy that the law is in the state,
And do not reck of Him who put it there, —
Who made the law and made the state to fit.
If there be one thing in these pathless woods,
One gleam of sunshine o'er their flying streams,
'T is that they are not here, — the human vipers,
Warmed in my breast till dawned the hour to sting,
And turn the innocent blood to madness
That had sustained their life, and painted soft
A long and sunny day of true attachment;
Like the Samaritan binding up my veins,
Then stabbing to the heart.
And if I showed aught to the crowd,
They laughed to scorn, or with indifference,
Strangled my offspring. What's the search of fame?
Why should man care for the applause of man,
Knowing the painted pageant that he is? —
Is that the moonlight gleaming on the lid
That shuts the letters? There it falls across
In a long, narrow line of icy light.
That hand, white and sepulchral, — is 't a hand,
Fringed with its shroud, that lifts the dust-strown lid?
" Eliot! scourge not the past; your heart was locked;
You thought friends loved you not. Not so; 't was you
That did not love them, for your heart was chilled
By its inherent coldness. You were vain;
Yourself you loved. You thought your verse was well, —
Now mark this letter; 't is this hand that wrote.
You do not read my letters now; let me: —

" There is an hour when justice seeks her own;
There is a day when love shall find its love.
Thou shalt not pace the shores of life alone,
See the stars shining from that Heaven above!

" Eliot! the child of that relentless fate, —
It must relent. There is a better land,
Smile on thy wounds, and be not desolate;
And find an anchor on time's lonely strand." "

Her voice! The moonlight sinks!
The hand is gone! A cloud 's across the sky!
A flash, — the lightning breaks above the cave,
And strikes the vision like the shot that kills.
Her voice again, — an echo to the flash:

" Thou shalt not wait me long; there is a place
To which thy steps are bent, and I go there, —
I wait for thee: not many mornings more
Thy palsied eyes life's blackened sun shall read. "