Madison Julius Cawein: Verses about Sea

Love one day, in childish anger,
Tired of his divinity,
Sick of rapture, sick of languor,
Threw his arrows in the sea.
Since then Ocean, like a woman,
Variable of nature seems:
Smiling; cruel; kind; inhuman;
Gloomed with grief and drowned in dreams.

Old days, old ways, old homes beside the sea;
Old gardens with old-fashioned flowers aflame,
Poppy, petunia, and many a name
Of many a flower of fragrant pedigree.
Old hills that glow with blue- and barberry,
And rocks and pines that stand on guard, the same,
Immutable, as when the Pilgrim came,
And here laid firm foundations of the Free.
The sunlight makes the dim dunes hills of snow,
And every vessel's sail a twinkling wing
Glancing the violet ocean far away:
The world is full of color and of glow;
A mighty canvas whereon God doth fling
The flawless picture of a perfect day.

Sunlight and shrill cicada and the low,
Slow, sleepy kissing of the sea and shore,
And rumor of the wind. The morning wore
A sullen face of fog that lifted slow,
Letting her eyes gleam through of grayest glow;
Wearing a look like that which once she wore
When, Gloucesterward from Dogtown there, they bore
Some old witchwife with many a gibe and blow.
But now the day has put off every care,
And sits at peace beside the smiling sea,
Dreaming bright dreams with lazy-lidded eyes:
One is a castle, precipiced in air,
And one a golden galleons can it be
'Tis but the cloudworld of the sunset skies?

There is a place among the Cape Ann hills
That looks from fir-dark summits on the sea,
Whose surging sapphire changes constantly
Beneath deep heavens, Morning windowsills,
With golden calm, or sunset citadels
With storm, whose towers the winds' confederacy
And bandit thunder hold in rebel fee,
Swooping upon the ilsher's sail that swells.
A place, where Sorrow ceases to complain,
And life's old Cares put all their burdens by,
And Weariness forgets itself in rest.
Would that all life were like it; might obtain
Its pure repose, its outlook, strong and high,
That sees, beyond, far Islands of the Blest.

The sun sinks scarlet as a barberry.
Far off at sea one vessel lifts a sail,
Hurrying to harbor from the coming gale,
That banks the west above a choppy sea.
The sun is gone; the fide is flowing free;
The bay is opaled with wild light; and pale
The lighthouse spears its flame now; through a veil
That falls about the sea mysteriously.
Out there she sits and mutters of her dead,
Old Ocean; of the stalwart and the strong,
Skipper and fisher whom her arms dragged down:
Before her now she sees their ghosts; o'erhead
As gray as rain, their wild wrecks sweep along,
And all night long lay siege to this old town.

One tree, storm-twisted, like an evil hag,
The sea-wind in its hair, beside a path
Waves frantic arms, as if in wild-witch wrath
At all the world. Gigantic, grey as slag,
Great boulders shoulder through the hills, or crag
The coast with danger, monster-like, that lifts
Huge granite, round which wheel the gulls and swifts,
And at whose base the rotting sea-weeds drag.
Inward the hills are wooded; valley-cleft;
Tangled with berries; vistaed dark with pines;
At whose far end, as 'twere within a frame,
Some trail of water that the ocean left
Gleams like a painting where one white sail shines,
Lit with the sunset's poppy-coloured flame.

Here where the coves indent the shore and fall
And fill with ebb and flowing of the tides;
Whereon some barge rocks or some dory rides,
By which old orchards bloom, or, from the wall,
Pelt every lane with fruit; where gardens, tall
With roses, riot; swift my gladness glides
To that old pasture where the mushroom hides,
The chicory blooms and Peace sits mid them all.
Fenced in with rails and rocks, its emerald slopes.
Ribbed with huge granite, where the placid cows
Tinkle a browsing bell, roll to a height
Wherefrom the sea, bright as adventuring hopes,
Swept of white sails and plowed of foaming prows,
Leaps like a Nereid on the ravished sight.

Ah me! I shall not waken soon
From dreams of such divinity!
A spirit singing 'neath the moon
To me.

Wild sea-spray driven of the storm
Is not so wildly white as she,
Who beckoned with a foam-white arm
To me.

With eyes dark green, and golden-green
Long locks that rippled drippingly,
Out of the green wave she did lean
To me.

And sang; till Earth and Heaven seemed
A far, forgotten memory,
And more than Heaven in her who gleamed
On me.

Sleep, sweeter than love's face or home;
And death's immutability;
And music of the plangent foam,
For me!

Sweep over her! with all thy ships,
With all thy stormy tides, O sea!-
The memory of immortal lips
For me!

'T was Fiddledeedee who put to sea
With a rollicking buccaneer Bumblebee:
An acorn-cup was their hollow boat
A rakish craft was their acorn-boat
And their sail a butterfly's wing;
Their mast, a bit o' the stem of an oat,
A jaunty jib was this bit of an oat,
And their rudder a hornet's sting,
By jing!
Their rudder a hornet's sting.
In an acorn-cup they put to sea,
Did Fiddledeedee and the Bumblebee.
'We'll sail to the Isles of Tweedledumdee,'
Quoth Fiddledeedee to the Bumblebee:
So they steered past the Isles of Cream and Ice
Oh, cold were the Isles of Cream and Ice
And came to the Sea of Ginger Beer;
And there, by the City of Sugar and Spice
The sweet, sweet City of Sugar and Spice
Their acorn-boat upset, my dear,
I hear
Their acorn boat upset, my dear.
'Good-by to the Isles of Tweedledumdee,'
Said Fiddledeedee to the Bumblebee.

It's 'Sweet, good-bye,' when pennants fly
And ships put out to sea;
It's a loving kiss, and a tear or two
In an eye of brown or an eye of blue;
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.


II


It's 'Friend or foe?' when signals blow
And ships sight ships at sea;
It's clear for action, and man the guns,
As the battle nears or the battle runs;
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.


III


It's deck to deck, and wrath and wreck
When ships meet ships at sea;
It's scream of shot and shriek of shell,
And hull and turret a roaring hell;
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.


IV


It's doom and death, and pause a breath
When ships go down at sea;
It's hate is over and love begins,
And war is cruel whoever wins;
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

Where are they, that song and tale
Tell of? lands our childhood knew?
Sea-locked Faerylands that trail
Morning summits, dim with dew,
Crimson o'er a crimson sail.

Where in dreams we entered on
Wonders eyes have never seen:
Whither often we have gone,
Sailing a dream-brigantine
On from voyaging dawn to dawn.

Leons seeking lands of song;
Fabled fountains pouring spray;
Where our anchors dropped among
Corals of some tropic bay,
With its swarthy native throng.

Shoulder ax and arquebus!-
We may find it!-past yon range
Of sierras, vaporous,
Rich with gold and wild and strange
That lost region dear to us.

Yet, behold, although our zeal
Darien summits may subdue,
Our Balboa eyes reveal
But a vaster sea come to-
New endeavor for our keel.

Yet! who sails with face set hard
Westward,-while behind him lies
Unfaith,-where his dreams keep guard
Round it, in the sunset skies,
He may reach it-afterward.

Whiten, oh whiten, O clouds of lawn!
Lily-like clouds that whiten above,
Now like a dove, and now like a swan,
But never, oh never pass on! pass on!
Never so white as the throat of my love.

Blue-black night on the mountain peaks
Is not so black as the locks o' my love!
Stars that shine through the evening streaks
Over the torrent that flashes and breaks,
Are not so bright as the eyes o' my love!

Moon in a cloud, a cloud of snow,
Mist in the vale where the rivulet sounds,
Dropping from ledge to ledge below,
Turning to gold in the sunset's glow,
Are not so soft as her footstep sounds.

Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees,
Is not so sweet as her laugh that rings;
Song o' wild birds on the morning breeze,
Birds and brooks and murmur o' bees,
Are harsh to her voice when she laughs or sings.

The rose of my heart is she, my dawn!
My star o' the east, my moon above!
My soul takes ship for the Avalon
Of her heart of hearts, and shall sail on
Till it anchors safe in its haven of love.

With argosies of dawn he sails,
And triremes of the dusk,
The Seas of Song, whereon the gales
Are myths that trail wild musk.

He hears the hail of Siren bands
From headlands sunset-kissed;
The Lotus-eaters wave pale hands
Within a land of mist.

For many a league he hears the roar
Of the Symplegades;
And through the far foam of its shore
The Isle of Sappho sees.

All day he looks, with hazy lids,
At gods who cleave the deep;
All night he hears the Nereids
Sing their wild hearts asleep.

When heaven thunders overhead,
And hell upheaves the Vast,
Dim faces of the ocean's dead
Gaze at him from each mast.

He but repeats the oracle
That bade him first set sail;
And cheers his soul with, 'All is well!
Go on! I will not fail.'

Behold! he sails no earthly bark
And on no earthly sea,
Who down the years into the dark,-
Divine of destiny,-

Holds to his purpose,-ships of Greece,-
Ideal-steered afar,
For whom awaits the Golden Fleece,
The fame that is his star.

She was strange as the orchids that blossom
And glimmer and shower their balm
And bloom on the tropical ocean,
That crystals round islands of palm:
And she sang to and beckoned and bound me
With beauty immortal and calm.

She was wild as the spirits that banner,
Auroral, the ends of the Earth,
With polar processions, that battle
With Darkness; or, breathing, give birth
To Silence; and herd from the mountains
The icebergs, gigantic of girth.

She was silver as sylphids who blend with
The morning the pearl of their cheeks:
And rosy as spirits whose tresses
Trail golden the sunset with streaks:
An opaline presence that beckoned
And spake as the sea-rapture speaks:

'Come with me! come down in the ocean!
Yea, leave this dark region with me!
Come! leave it! forget it in thunder
And roll of the infinite sea!
Come with me! No mortal bliss equals
The bliss I shall give unto thee.' . . .

And so it was then that she bound me
With witchcraft no mortal divines,
While softly with kisses she drew me,
As the moon draws a dream from the pines,
Down, down to her cavern of coral,
Where ever the sea-serpent twines.

And ever the creatures, whose shadows
Bulk huge as an isle on the sight,
Swim cloud-like and vast, without number,
Around her who leans, like a light,
And smiles at me sleeping, pale-sleeping,
Wrapped deep in her mermaiden might.

One night when trees were tumbled down,
And wild winds shook at sea the sail,
Old Gammer Gaffer, lean and brown,
Chuckled and whistled on her nail;
Then seized her broom and, mounting it,
Flew up the chimney with her cat;
All Dogtown bayed to see her flit,
The screech-owl shrieked, and, lightning-lit,
About her head flew black the bat.

II.

Her crow-like body, humped and black,
Seemed part and portion of her broom;
The black cat, crouched upon her back,
Lit with its yellow eyes the gloom.
Towards Gloucester Town she took her flight,
And night grew wilder as she went;
The wind blew out the fisher's light,
And tore his sails in tatters white,
And strewed them through the firmament.

III.

Old shutters clapped and windows rapped,
And shingles shook as if in pain;
Her besom on each old door slapped
And flapped as, cloaked and conical-capped,
Whisked by old Gammer Gaffer's train.

IV.

To window-panes, where candle-light
Showed some good wife who sat alone,
She pressed her sharp face, skinny white,
And knocked with knuckled hands of bone:
Then croaked and mumbled, like the draught
That grumbles in the chimney-flue;
Or on the gables danced and laughed,
Her old cloak flapping as if daft,
While round her face her wild hair blew.

V.

Old gutters dripped and dead leaves skipped,
And wildly struck the village clock,
As off a shutter here she ripped,
Old Gammer! or like madness whipped
Around and 'round some weather-cock.

VI.

Then at one door she shook the latch,
And to a cranny set her chin
And croaked:'Hey! here's an egg to hatch.
Eh? Goodie Brown, come, take it in.
I've news for ye! Good news! he! he!
Your old man he's gone down at sea.
There's something, eh? to hearten ye!
Hey! what man now shall wear his shoes?'

VII.

And, chuckling to herself, again
Around the house she rode her broom;
Then mounted to the weather-vane
And whirled and maundered to the gloom:
'Aye! weep, ye women! weep and wail!
'Twas I who wrought your good men's weird!
'Twas I who raised the Gloucester gale!
'Twas I who tattered shroud and sail,
And seized and drowned them, by my beard!'

VIII.

Old sign-boards squeaked and gables creaked.
And crazy gates closed with a bang,
As, parrot-beaked and lanthorn-cheeked,
Old Gammer round the belfry shrieked
And made its cracked old bell go clang

IX.

So round and round the old Cape Town
She whirled and whined as whines the wind;
Now this way blew her rag of gown,
Now that way, through the blackness blind.
And as she went she crowed and croaked.
And crooned some snatch of devil's verse,
While now and then her cat she stroked;
And, in a wink, all capped and cloaked,
Flew back to Dogtown with a curse.

With anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips,
Within the sculptured stoa by the sea,
All day she waited while, like ghostly ships,
Long clouds rolled over Paphos: the wild bee
Hung in the sultry poppy, half asleep,
Beside the shepherd and his drowsy sheep.

White-robed she waited day by day; alone
With the white temple's shrined concupiscence,
The Paphian goddess on her obscene throne,
Binding all chastity to violence,
All innocence to lust that feels no shame-
Venus Mylitta born of filth and flame.

So must they haunt her marble portico,
The devotees of Paphos, passion-pale
As moonlight streaming through the stormy snow;
Dark eyes desirous of the stranger sail,
The gods shall bring across the Cyprian Sea,
With him elected to their mastery.

A priestess of the temple came, when eve
Blazed, like a satrap's triumph, in the west;

And watched her listening to the ocean's heave,
Dusk's golden glory on her face and breast,
And in her hair the rosy wind's caress,-
Pitying her dedicated tenderness.

When out of darkness night persuades the stars,
A dream shall bend above her saying, 'Soon
A barque shall come with purple sails and spars,
Sailing from Tarsus 'neath a low white moon;
And thou shalt see one in a robe of Tyre
Facing toward thee like the god Desire.

'Rise then! as, clad in starlight, riseth Night-
Thy nakedness clad on with loveliness!
So shalt thou see him, like the god Delight,
Breast through the foam and climb the cliff to press
Hot lips to thine and lead thee in before
Love's awful presence where ye shall adore.'

Thus at her heart the vision entered in,
With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed,
And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin,
A shimmering splendor robed in amethyst,-
Seen like that star set in the glittering gloam,-
Venus Mylitta born of fire and foam.

So shall she dream until, near middle night,-
When on the blackness of the ocean's rim
The moon, like some war-galleon all alight
With blazing battle, from the sea shall swim,-
A shadow, with inviolate lips and eyes,
Shall rise before her speaking in this wise:

'So hast thou heard the promises of one,-
Of her, with whom the God of gods is wroth,-
For whom was prophesied at Babylon
The second death-Chaldaean Mylidoth!
Whose feet take hold on darkness and despair,
Hissing destruction in her heart and hair.

'Wouldst thou behold the vessel she would bring?-
A wreck! ten hundred years have smeared with slime:
A hulk! where all abominations cling,
The spawn and vermin of the seas of time:
Wild waves have rotted it; fierce suns have scorched;
Mad winds have tossed and stormy stars have torched.

'Can lust give birth to love? The vile and foul
Be mother to beauty? Lo! can this thing be?-
A monster like a man shall rise and howl
Upon the wreck across the crawling sea,
Then plunge; and swim unto thee; like an ape,
A beast all belly.-Thou canst not escape!'

Gone was the shadow with the suffering brow;
And in the temple's porch she lay and wept,
Alone with night, the ocean, and her vow.-
Then up the east the moon's full splendor swept,
And dark between it-wreck or argosy?-
A sudden vessel far away at sea.

Far to the South a star,
Bright-shining over all;
And a sound of voices singing,
'Round a Babe in an ox's-stall.

Three Kings a-riding, riding,
With gifts of myrrh and gold,
Far, far from the wild North Ocean,
Of which this tale is told:

By the sea, in the Hall of Beele,
Were Yule and joy and feast,
Outside was the noise of the ocean
And storm, like a howling beast.

The King sate at the banquet
With his Jarls and Berserks hale,
Quaffing to Thor and Odin
Huge horns of mead and ale.

Unheeded howled the winter
'Round the oak walls of the King,
For a mighty skald with a runic harp
Made the hall re-echoing ring.

Loud laughed the blonde Norse maidens
As they brimmed the barmy cup,
Where the torches flickered the war-blades
And the bucklers hanging up.

But out by the thundering North Sea
Ten shattered dragons lie,
Vessels, like great sea-monsters,
To the billows heaving high.

And pale and hacked with gashes,
'Mid his battered arms lies low
The red-haired Viking, Hareck,
Half-buried in the snow.

And wan, where the waves beat sullen,
Lies his brother, one-eyed Hulf,
Above whose mailéd visage
Snarls the winter-famished wolf.

And where is seen the glimmer
Of arms on dune and shore,
Their warriors, fierce and long-haired,
Lie frozen in their gore.

For Hulf and red-haired Hareck
To Sogn did harrying sail,
But Beele and his Berserkers
Did give them welcome hale.

On the shore of the wild North Ocean,
In the wild mist and the spray,
In the spindrift and the tempest
The battle clanged all day.

On the shore of the wild North Ocean,
When fell the wilder night,
The Vikings, Hulf and Hareck,
As the snow lay cold and white.

Not for long in their shattered armor,
By the billow-booming deep,
Were left the terrible warriors
In their eternal sleep.

For Odin from Valhala
Saw the Vikings fight and fall,
And bade the Valkyrs summon
The heroes to his Hall.

They came. The ghosts of the Vikings
Stood dark-browed on the field,
Moody within the tempest,
Each leaning on his shield.

In his great-horned helm loomed Hareck,
His face like some wild moon
That looks upon the havoc
Of a field with battle strewn.

Like a dark star, dim and misty,
Faint-seen through scud-blown air,
Hulf's-face on the Maids of Odin
Shone in its wind-tossed hair.

And with them, lo! another,
Whose face was mild and sad
Unarmed, no Viking warrior,
A Man in whiteness clad.

Through snow and the foam of the ocean
Glittered the Valkyries,
And the sound of their trumpet voices
Was like to the stormy sea's.

'Behold, ' they cried, 'Valhala
Awaits! And Odin sent!
The polished skulls are brimmed with mead
And ready the tournament!

'And Thor and Brage and Balder,
And many an Aza fair,
On the pleasant plain of Ida,
Await your coming there!'

And they stretched their glittering gauntlets
To the Vikings standing pale,
And joy lit up their lowering brows
Like moonlight in a gale.

And then the other murmured,
And His voice was soft and low,
And a scent as of myrrh and lilies
Swept through the storm and snow:

'Come to Me, ye who labor,
And ye who are distressed!
All, all whose hearts are burdened,
And I will give you rest.

'I bring a different message
From that just brought of these,
A message of love and forgiveness
From My Father the King of Peace.

'Now ends the reign of Odin,
And My Father's rule begins!
Peace and good-will, good-will and peace,
And forgiveness of all sins!'

And He stretched His arms toward them,
And hushed were the howling gales:
And they saw that His brow was crowned with thorns,
And His hands were pierced with nails.

And there in the Hall of Beele
The sound of Yule died low,
And all was hushed as the Word of Christ
Pealed far through the wind and snow.

We were a crew of what you please,
Men with the lust of gold gone mad;
Dutch and Yankee and Portuguese,
With a nigger or two from Trinidad,
The scum of the Caribbees:
Outbound, outbound for a treasure ground,
A pirate isle no man had found,
A long-lost isle in the Southern Seas,
An isle of the Southern Seas.

We sailed our ship by a chart we bore,
The parchment script of a buccaneer,
Whose skeleton, found on a Carib shore,
Had kept its secret for many a year,
Locked in a buckle of belt it wore.
And the dim chart told of buried gold,
A hidden harbor and pirate hold,
On an isle that seamen touched no more,
That sailors knew no more.

We were a crew of Devil-may-care,
Who staked our lives on a bit of a scrawl;
Who diced each other for lot and share
Or ever we hoisted sail at all,
Or the brine blew through our hair.
At last with a hail for calm or gale,
The wind of adventure in our sail,
We piped up anchor and did our dare,
Steered for the Island there.

From Porto Bello to Isle of France,
And thence South East our chart read plain:
We followed the route of old Romance,
The plate-ship route of the Spanish Main,
The old wild route of Chance.
Black Beard sailed it and Jean Lafitte;
And Drake and Morgan, and many a fleet
Of pillage once that led the dance,
Spain's golden-galleon dance.

Moidores, guineas, and pieces-of-eight;
Doubloons round as the gibbous moon;
All the wealth that they sacked as freight
In the good old days' of the piccaroon,
We dreamed of soon and late:
And gems of the East, of which the least
Would grace a Khan's or a Caliph's feast,
And chest on chest of Spanish plate,
Great chests of Spanish plate.

The wind blew fair from Panama;
For a month the wind blew fair and free;
We steered our ship by the gold we saw
In the far-off script of a century,
Wherein men knew no law.
We held our course, for better or worse,
Now with a song and now with a curse,
According to the lots we'd draw,
Rum or the lots we'd draw.

We had not reckoned on destiny,
And him all seamen dread, they say,
That captain, old in infamy,
Who holds to Hell till the Judgment Day,
And takes of Earth his fee.
Oh, black and black is the South Sea track
Of the skeleton Captain, Yellow Jack,
Who sweeps with his boneyard crew the sea,
The hurricane-haunted sea.

. . . . . .

Six weeks we lay in the doldrums; dead;
Six weeks that rotted us with delay,
Till a gale sprang up and drove us ahead,
Out of our course, for a week and a day,
Till we deemed we were Dutchman-led.
When the gale was done, why, one by one,
The scurvy took us, every son,
And mutiny down in the hold was bred,
Mutiny then was bred.

At last on our bow we sighted shore,
A wild crag circled of cloud and sea;
Our pirate isle, where ceaselessly
The rock-fanged surf kept up its roar
Round a towering bluff and tree,
Where the chart was marked that the gold should be:
Cliffs that the seafowl clamored o'er,
With the dragging seaweed hoar.

A smudge of mist and a gleam that died,
And a muttering down below
And night was on us at a stride,
And, God! how it came to blow!
And a man went over the side:
Then fore and aft of our crazy craft
Corposants glimmered and Madness laughed,
And a voice from the Island wild replied,
A dæmon voice replied.

Three nights and days of the hurncane's rage.
What curse now held us off!
We never would win to an anchorage,
We thought, when, ho! with a scoff
The Island thundered, 'Come take your wage!'
And, lo, that night by the thin moonlight
We found our ship in a bay or bight,
That seemed a part of another age,
A far-off pirate age.

Our ship a-leak and her pumps all jammed
We won to the Harbor of Yellow Jack;
And so it was that he took command
And hoisted his skeleton flag of black,
And our decks with dead men crammed.
But we we found the treasure ground
Where some went mad and some were drowned
For the gold, you see, was damned, was damned,
The gold you see was damned.

A beardless crew we launched our little boat;
Laughed at its lightness; joyed to see it float,
Veer in the wind, and, with the freshening gale,
Bend o'er the foaming prow the swollen sail.

No fears were ours within that stanch-built barque;
No fears were ours 'though all the west was dark,
And overhead were unknown stars; the ring
Of ocean sailless and no bird a-wing:

Yet there was light; radiance that dimmed the stars
Dancing like bubbles in Night's sapphire jars.

We knew not what: only adown the skies
A shape that led us, with sidereal eyes,
Brow-bound and shod with elemental fire,
Beckoning us onward like the god Desire.

Brisk blew the breeze; and through the starry gloam,
Flung from our prow, flew white the furrowed foam.
Long, long we sailed; and now have reached our goal.
Come, let us rest us here and call the roll.

How few we are! Alas, alas, how few!
How many perished! Every storm that blew
Swept from our deck or from our staggering mast
Some well-loved comrade in the boiling vast.

Wildly we saw them sink beneath our prow,
Helpless to aid; pallid of face and brow,
Lost in the foam we saw them sink or fade
Beneath the tempest's rolling cannonade.

They sank; but where they sank, above the wave
A corposant danced, a flame that marked their grave;
And o'er the flame, whereon were fixed our eyes,
An albatross, huge in volcanic skies.

They died; but not in vain their stubborn strife,
The zeal that held them onward, great of life:

They too are with us; they, in spite of death,
Have reached here first. Upon our brows their breath
Breathes softly, vaguely, sweetly as the breeze
From isles of spice in summer-haunted seas.

From palaces and pinnacles of mist
The sunset builds in heaven's amethyst
Beyond yon headland where the billows break,
Perhaps they beckon now; the winds that shake

These tamarisks, that never bowed to storm,
Haply are but their voices filled with charm
Bidding us rest from labor; toil no more;
Draw up our vessel on the happy shore;

And of the lotus of content and peace,
Growing far inland, eat, and never cease
To dream the dreams that keep the heart still young,
Hearing forever how the foam is flung

Beneath the cliff; forgetting all life's care;
Easing the soul of all its long despair.

Let us forget how once within that barque,
Like some swift eagle sweeping through the dark,
We weighed the sun; we weighed the farthest stars;
Traced the dim continents of fiery Mars;

Measured the vapory planets whose long run
Takes centuries to gird their glimmering sun:

Let us forget how oft the crystal mountains
Of the white moon we searched; and plumbed her fountains,
That hale the waters of the æonian deep
In ebb and flow, and in her power keep:

Let us remember her but as a gem,
A mighty pearl, placed in Night's anadem:
Let us forget how once we pierced the flood,
Fathorned its groves of coral, red as blood,
Branching and blooming underneath our keel,
Through which like birds the nautilus and eel,
The rainbowed conch and irised fishes swept,
And where the sea-snake like a long weed slept.

Here let us dream our dreams: let Helen bare
Her white breast for us; and let Dido share
Her rich feast with us; or let Lalage
Laugh in our eyes as once, all lovingly,
She laughed for Flaccus. We are done with all
The lusts of life! its loves are ours. Let fall
The Catilines! the Cæsars! and in Gaul
Their legions perish! And let Phillip's son
In Ammon's desert die; and never a one
Lead back to Greece of all his conquering line
From gemmed Hydaspes.

Here we set our shrine!
Here on this headland templed of God's peaks,
Where Beauty only to our worship speaks
Her mighty truths, gazing beyond the shore
Into the heart of God: her eyes a door
Wherethrough we see the dreams, the mysteries,
That grew to form in the Art that once was Greece:
Making them live once more for us, the shapes
That filled the woods, the mountains, and the capes
Of Hellas: Dryad, Oread, and Faun;
Naiad and Nereid, and all the hosts of Dawn.

Annisquam

Old days, old ways, old homes beside the sea;
Old gardens with old-fashioned flowers aflame,
Poppy, petunia, and many a name
Of many a flower of fragrant pedigree.
Old hills that glow with blue- and barberry,
And rocks and pines that stand on guard, the same,
Immutable, as when the Pilgrim came,
And here laid firm foundations of the Free.
The sunlight makes the dim dunes hills of snow,
And every vessel's sail a twinkling wing
Glancing the violet ocean far away:
The world is full of color and of glow;
A mighty canvas whereon God doth fling
The flawless picture of a perfect day.

II.

'The Highlands, ' Annisquam

Here, from the heights, among the rocks and pines,
The sea and shore seem some tremendous page
Of some vast book, great with our heritage,
Breathing the splendor of majestic lines.
Yonder the dunes speak silver; yonder shines
The ocean's sapphire word; there, gray with age,
The granite writes its lesson, strong and sage;
And there the surf its rhythmic passage signs.
The winds, that sweep the page, that interlude
Its majesty with music; and the tides,
That roll their thunder in, that period
Its mighty rhetoric, deep and dream-imbued,
Are what it seems to say, of what abides,
Of what's eternal and of what is God.

III.

Storm At Annisquam

The sun sinks scarlet as a barberry.
Far off at sea one vessel lifts a sail,
Hurrying to harbor from the coming gale,
That banks the west above a choppy sea.
The sun is gone; the fide is flowing free;
The bay is opaled with wild light; and pale
The lighthouse spears its flame now; through a veil
That falls about the sea mysteriously.
Out there she sits and mutters of her dead,
Old Ocean; of the stalwart and the strong,
Skipper and fisher whom her arms dragged down:
Before her now she sees their ghosts; o'erhead
As gray as rain, their wild wrecks sweep along,
And all night long lay siege to this old town.

IV.

From Cove To Cove

The road leads up a hill through many a brake,
Blueberry and barberry, bay and sassafras,
By an abandoned quarry, where, like glass,
A round pool lies; an isolated lake,
A mirror for what presences, that make
Their wildwood toilets here! The road is grass
Gray-scarred with stone: great bowlders, as we pass,
Slope burly shoulders towards us. Cedars shake
Wild balsam from their tresses; there and here
Clasping a glimpse of ocean and of shore
In arms of swaying green. Below, at last,
Beside the sea, with derrick and with pier,
By heaps of granite, noise of drill and bore,
A Cape Ann town, towering with many a mast.

V.

Pastures By The Sea

Here where the coves indent the shore and fall
And fill with ebb and flowing of the tides;
Whereon some barge rocks or some dory rides,
By which old orchards bloom, or, from the wall,
Pelt every lane with fruit; where gardens, tall
With roses, riot; swift my gladness glides
To that old pasture where the mushroom hides,
The chicory blooms and Peace sits mid them all.
Fenced in with rails and rocks, its emerald slopes.
Ribbed with huge granite, where the placid cows
Tinkle a browsing bell, roll to a height
Wherefrom the sea, bright as adventuring hopes,
Swept of white sails and plowed of foaming prows,
Leaps like a Nereid on the ravished sight.

VI.

The Dunes

Far as the eye can see, in domes and spires,
Buttress and curve, ruins of shifting sand,
In whose wild making wind and sea took hand,
The white dunes stretch. The wind, that never tires,
Striving for strange effects that he admires,
Changes their form from time to time; the land
Forever passive to his mad demand,
And to the sea's, who with the wind conspires.
Here, as on towers of desolate cities, bay
And wire-grass grow, wherein no insect cries,
Only a bird, the swallow of the sea,
That homes in sand. I hear it far away
Crying or is it some lost soul that flies,
Above the land, ailing unceasingly?

VII.

By The Summer Sea

Sunlight and shrill cicada and the low,
Slow, sleepy kissing of the sea and shore,
And rumor of the wind. The morning wore
A sullen face of fog that lifted slow,
Letting her eyes gleam through of grayest glow;
Wearing a look like that which once she wore
When, Gloucesterward from Dogtown there, they bore
Some old witchwife with many a gibe and blow.
But now the day has put off every care,
And sits at peace beside the smiling sea,
Dreaming bright dreams with lazy-lidded eyes:
One is a castle, precipiced in air,
And one a golden galleons can it be
'Tis but the cloudworld of the sunset skies?

The sunset-crimson poppies are departed,
Mariana!
The dusky-centred, sultry-smelling poppies,
The drowsy-hearted,
That burnt like flames along the garden coppice:
All heavy-headed,
The ruby-cupped and opium-brimming poppies,
That slumber wedded,
Mariana!
The sunset-crimson poppies are departed.
Oh, heavy, heavy are the hours that fall,
The lonesome hours of the lonely days!
No poppy strews oblivion by the wall,
Where lone the last pod sways,
Oblivion that was hers of old that happier made her days.
Oh, weary, weary is the sky o'er all,
The days that creep, the hours that crawl,
And weary all the ways
She leans her face against the old stone wall,
The lichened wall, the mildewed wall,
And dreams, the long, long days,
Of one who will not come again whatever may befall.
. . . . .
All night it blew. The rain streamed down
And drowned the world in misty wet.
At morning, 'round the sunflower's crown
A row of glimmering drops was set;
The candytuft, heat shrivelled brown,
And beds of drought-dried mignonette,
Were beat to earth: but wearier, oh,
The rain was than the sun's fierce glow
That in the garth had wrought such woe:
That killed the moss-rose ere it bloomed,
And scorched the double-hollyhocks;
And bred great, poisonous weeds that doomed
The snapdragon and standing-phlox;
'Mid which gaunt spiders wove and loomed
Their dusty webs 'twixt rows of box;
And rotted into sleepy ooze
The lilied moat, that, lined with yews,
Lay scummed with many sickly hues.
How oft she longed and prayed for rain!
To blot the hateful landscape out!
To hem her heart, so parched with pain,
With sounds of coolth and broken drought;
And cure with change her stagnant brain,
And soothe to sleep all care and doubt.
At last when many days had past
And she had ceased to care at last
The longed-for rain came, falling fast.
At night, as late she lay awake,
And thought of him who had not come,
She heard the gray wind, moaning, shake
Her lattice; then the steady drum
Of storm upon the leads.. . The ache
Within her heart, so burdensome,
Grew heavier with the moan of rain.
The house was still, save, at her pane
The wind cried; hushed, then cried again.
All night she lay awake and wept:
There was no other thing to do:
At dawn she rose and, silent, crept
Adown the stairs that led into
The dripping garth, the storm had swept
With ruin; where, of every hue,
The flowers lay rotting, stained with mould;
Where all was old, unkempt and old,
And ragged as a marigold.
She sat her down, where oft she sat,
Upon a bench of marble, where,
In lines she oft would marvel at,
A Love was carved. She did not dare
Look on it then, remembering that
Here in past time he kissed her hair,
And murmured vows while, soft above,
The full moon lit the forth thereof,
The slowly crumbling form of Love.
She could but weep, remembering hours
Like these. Then in the drizzling rain.,
That weighed with wet the dying flowers,
She sought the old stone dial again;
The dial, among the moss-rose bowers,
Where often she had read, in vain,
Of time and change, and love and loss,
Rude-lettered and o'ergrown with moss,
That slow the gnomon moved across.
Remembering this she turned away,
The rain and tears upon her face.
There was no thing to do or say.
She stood a while, a little space,
And watched the rain bead, round and gray,
Upon the cobweb's tattered lace,
And tag the toadstool's spongy brim
With points of mist; and, orbing, dim
With fog the sunflower's ruined rim.
With fog, through which the moon at night
Would glimmer like a spectre sail;
Or, sullenly, a blur of light,
Like some huge glow-worm dimly trail;
'Neath which she 'd hear, wrapped deep in white,
The far sea moaning on its shale:
While in the garden, pacing slow,
And listening to its surge and flow,
She'd seem to hear her own heart's woe.
Now as the fog crept in from sea,
A great, white darkness, like a pall,
The yews and huddled shrubbery,
That dripped along the weedy wall,
Turned phantoms; and as shadowy
She too seemed, wandering 'mid it all
A phantom, pale and sad and strange,
And hopeless; doomed for aye to range
About the melancholy grange.
. . . . .
The pansies too are dead, the violet-varied,
Mariana!
The raven-dyed and fire-fretted pansies,
To memory married;
That from the grass, like forms in old romances,
Raised fairy faces:
All dead they lie, the violet-velvet pansies,
In many places,
Mariana!
The pansies too are dead, the violet-varied.
Oh, hateful, hateful are the hours that pass,
The lonely hours of the lonesome nights!
No pansy scatters heartsease through the grass,
That autumn sorrow blights,
The heartsease that was hers of old that happier made her nights.
Oh, barren, barren is her life, alas!
Its youth and beauty, all it has,
And barren all delights
She lays her face against the withered grass,
The sodden grass, the autumn grass,
And thinks, the long, long nights,
Of one who will not come again whatever comes to pass.

Not they the great
Who build authority around a State,
And firm on calumny and party hate
Base their ambition. Nor the great are they
Who with disturbance make their way,
Mindful of but to-day
And individual ends that so compel
They know not what they do, yet do it well.
Butthey the great.
Who sacrifice their honor for the State
And set their seal
Upon the writing, consecrate,
Of time and fate,
That says, 'He suffered for a People's weal:
Or, calm of soul and eye,
Helped to eliminate
The Madness that makes Progress its wild cry,
And for its policy
Self, a divinity,
That on illusions thrives,
And knows not whither its desire drives
Till on the rocks its headlong vessel rives.'

II.

God of the wise,
On whom the People wait,
And who at last all evils wilt abate,
Make Thou more keen men's eyes:
Let them behold how Thou at length wilt bring,
From turmoil and confusion now that cling
About the Nation's feet,
Order and calm and peace
With harmony of purpose, wing to wing
As out of Chaos sprang
Light and its co-mate, Law, when loud Thy summons rang
High instruments of power never to cease,
Spirits of destiny,
Who from their lofty seat
Shall put down hate and strife's insanity,
And all contentions old that eat
The country to the quick:
And Common-Sense, the Lion-Heart now sick,
Forth from his dungeon cell
Go free,
With Song, his bold Blondél;
And, stretching forth a stalwart arm
To laboring land and sea,
With his glad coming warm
The land to one accord, one sympathy
Of soul; whose strength shall stand
For something more than gold to all the land,
Making more sure the ties
Of freedom and equality
And Progress; who, unto the watchful skies,
Unfurls his banner and, with challenging hand,
Leads on the world's emprise.

III.

God of the just and wise,
Behold! why is it that our mortal eyes
Are not more open to the good that lies
Around our feet? the blessings in disguise
That go with us about our daily deeds
Attending all our needs?
Why is it that, so rich and prodigal,
We will complain
Of Nature her whose liberal hand,
Summer and spring and fall,
Pours out abundance on the Land?
Cotton and oil and grain
O God, make men more sane!
Help them to understand
And trust in her who never failed her due;
Who never camped with Famine and his crew
Or made ally
Of the wild House of old Calamity!
But always faithfully,
Year after generous year,
From forth her barque of plenty, stanch of sail,
Poured big abundance. What did lies avail,
Or what did fear
To make her largess fail? They who descry,
Raising a hue and cry,
Disaster's Harpies darkening the sky
Each month that comes and goes, are they not less
Of insight than the beasts of hill and field,
Who take no worry, knowing Earth will yield
Her usual harvest a sufficiency
For all and more; yea, even enough to bless
The sons of Greed, who make a market of lies
And blacken blessings unto credulous eyes,
Turning them curses, till on every hand
They see, as Speculation sees,
God's benefactions rain, and sun, and snow
Working destruction in the land,
The camping-ground of old hostilities,
Changing all joy to woe
With visitations of her wrath withal,
Proclaiming her, our mother Nature, foe
Undeviating, to our hopes below
Nature, who never yet has failed to bless us all.

IV.

By the long leagues of cotton Texas rolls,
And Mississippi bolls;
By the wide seas of wheat
The far Dakotas beat
Against the barriers of the mountainland:
And by the miles of maize
Nebraska lays
Like a vast carpet in
Her House of Nights and Days,
Where, glittering, in council meet
The Spirits of the Cold and Heat,
With old Fertility whose heart they win:
By all the wealth replete
Within our scan,
From Florida to where the snows begin,
Made manifest of Nature unto Man
Behold!
The Land is as a mighty scroll unrolled,
Whereon God writes His name
In harvest: green and gold
And russet making fair as oft of old
Each dædal part He decorates the same
With splendors manifold
Of mountains and of rivers, fruits and flowers;
Sealing each passage of the rubric Hours
With esoteric powers
Of life and love, and all their mystery,
Through which men yet may see
The truth that shall refute the fool that cries,
'God has forgot us and our great emprise!'

V.

Of elemental mold
God made our Country, wombing her with gold
And veining her with copper, iron, and coal.
Making her strong for her appointed goal.
High on her eagled peaks His rainbow gleams
Its mighty message: in her mountain streams
His voice is heard: and on the wind and rain
Ride Potencies
And Portents of His purpose, while she dreams
Of great achievements, great activities,
And, weariless of brain,
From plain to busy plain,
And peak to plateau, with unresting hand,
Along the laboring land,
She speeds swift train on train,
Feeling the urge in her of energies,
That bear her business on
From jubilant dawn to dawn,
From where the snow makes dumb
Alaskan heights, to where, like hives of bees,
The prairies hum
With cities; while around her girdling seas
Ships go and come,
Servants and slaves of her vast industries.

VI.

And He, who sits above,
And, watching, sees
Her dreams become great actualities,
Out of His love
Will He continue to bestow
Blessings upon her, even more and more,
Until their store
Shall pass the count of all the dreams we know?
Why heed
The sordid souls that worship Greed?
The vampire lives that feed,
Feast and grow fat
On what they name the Proletariat;
Wringing with blood and sweat,
From forth the nation's muscle, heart, and brain,
The strength that keeps her sane:
They, too, shall have their day and cease to be.
Ignoble souls, who, for a market, set
Before the People's eyes
A scarecrow train
Of fabrications, rumors, antic lies
Of havoc and calamity,
Panic appearances of Famine, War,
That for the moment bar
The path of Truth and work their selfish gain.

VII.

God of the simple and the wise,
Grant us more light; and lead
The great adventure to its mighty end!
From Thy o'erarching skies
Still give us heed,
And make more clear the way that onward lies.
Not wealth now is her need,
The great Republic's, Wealth, the child of Greed,
Nay, nay! O God, but for the dream we plead,
The dream as well as deed,
The Dream of Beauty which shall so descend
From Thee, and with her inmost being blend,
That it shall help her cause
More than all temporal laws. . . .

VIII.

Now, for her soul's increase,
And spirit's peace,
Curb the bright dæmon Speed;
Grant her release
From strife; and let the joy that springs
From love of lowly things
Possess her soul and plead
For work that counts for something to the heart,
And grows immortal part
Of life the work called Art;
And let Love lead
Her softly all her days; with quiet hand
Sowing the fruitful land
With spiritual seed
Of wisdom from which blossoms shall expand
Of vital beauty, and her fame increase
More than the wealth of all the centuries.

IX.

God of the wise,
The meek and humble, who still look to Thee,
Holding to sanity
And truth and purpose of the great emprise,
Keep her secure,
And beautiful and pure
As when in ages past Thou didst devise,
Saying within Thy heart, 'She shall endure!
A great Republic!' Let her course be sure,
O God, and, in detraction's spite,
Unquestionably right;
And in the night,
If night there must be, light a beacon light
To guide her safely through the strife,
The conflict of her soul, with passions rife.
Oh, raise some man of might,
Whose mind shall put down storm and stress of life,
And kindle anew the lamp whose light shall burn,
A Pharos, in the storms,
That shall arise and with confusion shake
Foundations of the walls of Civilization:
A pillar of flame, behold,
Like that of old,
Which Israel followed and its bondage brake,
Leading each night-lost Nation
To refuge in her arms,
Freedom's, away from all the Tyrannies
Of all the Centuries,
Safe on her heart to learn
To hush its heart's alarms.

September On Cape Ann

The partridge-berry flecks with flame the way
That leads to ferny hollows where the bee
Drones on the aster. Far away the sea
Points its deep sapphire with a gleam of grey.
Here from this height where, clustered sweet, the bay
Clumps a green couch, the haw and barberry
Beading her hair, sad Summer, seemingly,
Has fallen asleep, unmindful of the day.
The chipmunk barks upon the old stone wall;
And in the shadows, like a shadow, stirs
The woodchuck where the boneset's blossom creams.
Was that a phoebe with its pensive call?
A sighing wind that shook the drowsy firs?
Or only Summer waking from her dreams?

II.

In An Annisquam Garden

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time lovers and of dreams:
Within the quiet sunlight there, meseems,
I see them walking where those lilies blow.
The hardy phlox sways to some garment's flow;
The salvia there with sudden scarlet streams,
Caught from some ribbon of some throat that gleams,
Petunia-fair, in flounce and furbelow.
I seem to hear their whispers in each wind
That wanders mid the flowers. There they stand!
Among the shadows of that apple-tree!
They are not dead, whom still it keeps in mind,
This garden, planted by some lovely hand
That keeps it fragrant with its memory.

III.

The Elements

I saw the spirit of the pines that spoke
With spirits of the ocean and the storm:
Against the tumult rose its tattered form,
Wild rain and darkness round it like a cloak.
Fearful it stood, limbed like some twisted oak,
Gesticulating with one giant arm,
Raised as in protest of the night's alarm,
Defiant still of some impending stroke.
Below it, awful in its majesty,
The spirit of the deep, with rushing locks,
Raved: and above it, lightning-clad and shod,
Thundered the tempest. Thus they stood, the three;
Terror around them; while, upon the rocks,
Destruction danced, mocking at man and God.

IV.

Night And Storm At Gloucester

I heard the wind last night that cried and wept
Like some old skipper's ghost outside my door;
And on the roof the rain that tramped and tore
Like feet of seamen on a deck storm-swept.
Against the pane the Night with shudderings crept,
And crouched there wailing; moaning ever more
Its tale of terror; of the wrath on shore,
The rage at sea, bidding all wake who slept.
And then I heard a voice as old as Time;
The calling of the mother of the world,
Ocean, who thundered on her granite crags,
Foaming with fury, meditating crime.
And then, far off, wild minute guns; and, hurled
Through roaring surf, the rush of sails in rags.

V.

The Voice Of Ocean

A cry went through the darkness; and the moon,
Hurrying through storm, gazed with a ghastly face,
Then cloaked herself in scud: the merman race
Of surges ceased; and then th' Æolian croon
Of the wild siren, Wind, within the shrouds
Sunk to a sigh. The ocean in that place
Seemed listening; haunted, for a moment's space,
By something dread that cried against the clouds.
Mystery and night; and with them fog and rain:
And then that cry again as if the deep
Uttered its loneliness in one dark word:
Her horror of herself; her Titan pain;
Her monsters; and the dead that she must keep,
Has kept, alone, for centuries, unheard.

VI.

Waves

I saw the daughters of the ocean dance
With wind and tide, and heard them on the rocks:
White hands they waved me, tossing sunlit locks,
Green as the light an emerald holds in trance.
Their music bound me as with necromance
Of mermaid beauty, that for ever mocks,
And lured me as destruction lures wild flocks
Of light-led gulls and storm-tossed cormorants.
Nearer my feet they crept: I felt their lips:
Their hands of foam that caught at me, to press,
As once they pressed Leander: and, straightway,
I saw the monster-ending of their hips;
The cruelty hid in their soft caress;
The siren-passion ever more to slay.

VII.

A Bit Of Coast

One tree, storm-twisted, like an evil hag,
The sea-wind in its hair, beside a path
Waves frantic arms, as if in wild-witch wrath
At all the world. Gigantic, grey as slag,
Great boulders shoulder through the hills, or crag
The coast with danger, monster-like, that lifts
Huge granite, round which wheel the gulls and swifts,
And at whose base the rotting sea-weeds drag.
Inward the hills are wooded; valley-cleft;
Tangled with berries; vistaed dark with pines;
At whose far end, as 'twere within a frame,
Some trail of water that the ocean left
Gleams like a painting where one white sail shines,
Lit with the sunset's poppy-coloured flame.

VIII.

Autumn At Annisquam

The bitter-sweet and red-haw in her hands,
And in her hair pale berries of the bay,
She haunts the coves and every Cape Ann way,
The Indian, Autumn, wandered from her bands.
Beside the sea, upon a rock, she stands,
And looks across the foam, and straight the grey
Takes on a sunset tone, and all the day
Murmurs with music of forgotten lands.
Now in the woods, knee-deep among the ferns,
She walks and smiles and listens to the pines,
The sweetheart pines, that kiss and kiss again,
Whispering their love: and now she frowns and turns
And in the west the fog in ragged lines
Rears the wild wigwams of the tribes of rain.

IX.

Storm Sabbat

Against the pane the darkness, wet and cold,
Pressed a wild face and raised a ragged arm
Of cloud, clothed on with thunder and alarm
And terrible with elemental gold.
Above the fisher's hut, beyond the wold,
The wind, a Salem witch, rushed shrieking harm,
And swept her mad broom over every farm
To devil-revels in some forest old.
Hell and its-hags, it seemed, held court again
On every rock, trailing a tattered gown
Of surf, and whirling, screaming, to the sea
Elf-locks, fantastic, of dishevelled rain;
While in their midst death hobbled up and down
Monstrous and black, with diabolic glee.

X.

The Aurora

Night and the sea, and heaven overhead
Cloudless and vast, as 'twere of hollowed spar,
Wherein the facets gleamed of many a star,
And the half-moon a crystal radiance shed.
Then suddenly, with burning banners spread,
In pale celestial armour, as for war,
Into the heaven, flaming from afar,
The Northern Lights their phalanxed splendours led.
Night, for the moment, seemed to catch her breath,
And earth gazed, silent with astonishment,
As spear on spear the auroral armies came;
As when, triumphant over hell and death,
The victor angels thronged God's firmament
With sword on sword and burning oriflamme.

XI.

Dogtown

Far as the eye can see the land is grey,
And desolation sits among the stones
Looking on ruin who, from rocks like bones,
Stares with a dead face at the dying day.
Mounds, where the barberry and bay hold sway,
Show where homes rose once; where the village crones
Gossiped, and man, with many sighs and groans,
Laboured and loved and went its daily way.
Only the crow now, like a hag returned,
Croaks on the common that its hoarse voice mocks.
Meseems that here the sorrow of the earth
Has lost herself, and, with the past concerned,
Sits with the ghosts of dreams that haunt these rocks,
And old despairs to which man's soul gave birth.

XII.

An Abandoned Quarry

The barberry burns, the rose-hip crimsons warm,
And haw and sumach hedge the hill with fire,
Down which the road winds, worn of hoof and tire,
Only the blueberry-picker plods now from the farm.
Here once the quarry-driver, brown of arm,
Wielded the whip when, deep in mud and mire,
The axle strained, and earned his daily hire,
Labouring bareheaded in both sun and storm.
Wild-cherry now and blackberry and bay
Usurp the place: the wild-rose, undisturbed,
Riots, where once the workman earned his wage,
Whose old hands rest now, like this granite grey,
These rocks, whose stubborn will whilom he curbed,
Hard as the toil that was his heritage.

XIII.

A Pool Among The Rocks

I know a pool, whose crystalline repose
Sleeps under walls of granite, whence the pine
Leans looking at its image, line for line
Repeated with the sumach and wild-rose
That redden on the rocks; where, at day's close,
The sunset dreams, and lights incarnadine
Dark waters and the place seems brimmed with wine,
A giant cup that splendour overflows.
Night, in her livery of stars and moon,
Stoops to its mirror, gazing steadily;
And, saddened by her beauty, drops one tear,
A falling star; while round it sighs the rune
Of winds, conspirators that sweep from sea,
Whispering of things that fill the heart with fear.

XIV.

High On A Hill

There is a place among the Cape Ann hills
That looks from fir-dark summits on the sea,
Whose surging sapphire changes constantly
Beneath deep heavens, Morning windowsills,
With golden calm, or sunset citadels
With storm, whose towers the winds' confederacy
And bandit thunder hold in rebel fee,
Swooping upon the ilsher's sail that swells.
A place, where Sorrow ceases to complain,
And life's old Cares put all their burdens by,
And Weariness forgets itself in rest.
Would that all life were like it; might obtain
Its pure repose, its outlook, strong and high,
That sees, beyond, far Islands of the Blest.

They who maintained their rights,
Through storm and stress,
And walked in all the ways
That God made known,
Led by no wandering lights,
And by no guess,
Through dark and desolate days
Of trial and moan:
Here let their monument
Rise, like a word
In rock commemorative
Of our Land's youth;
Of ways the Puritan went,
With soul love-spurred
To suffer, die, and live
For faith and truth.
Here they the corner-stone
Of Freedom laid;
Here in their hearts' distress
They lit the lights
Of Liberty alone;
Here, with God's aid,
Conquered the wilderness,
Secured their rights.
Not men, but giants, they,
Who wrought with toil
And sweat of brawn and brain
Their freehold here;
Who, with their blood, each day
Hallowed the soil,
And left it without stain
And without fear.

II.

Yea; here, from men like these,
Our country had its stanch beginning;
Hence sprang she with the ocean breeze
And pine scent in her hair;
Deep in her eyes the winning,
The far-off winning of the unmeasured West;
And in her heart the care,
The young unrest,
Of all that she must dare,
Ere as a mighty Nation she should stand
Towering from sea to sea,
From land to moantained land,
One with the imperishable beauty of the stars
In absolute destiny;
Part of that cosmic law, no shadow mars,
To which all freedom runs,
That wheels the circles of the worlds and suns
Along their courses through the vasty night,
Irrevocable and eternal as is Light.

III.

What people has to-day
Such faith as launched and sped,
With psalm and prayer, the Mayflower on its way?
Such faith as led
The Dorchester fishers to this sea-washed point,
This granite headland of Cape Ann?
Where first they made their bed,
Salt-blown and wet with brine,
In cold and hunger, where the storm-wrenched pine
Clung to the rock with desperate footing. They,
With hearts courageous whom hope did anoint,
Despite their tar and tan,
Worn of the wind and spray,
Seem more to me than man,
With their unconquerable spirits. Mountains may
Succumb to men like these, to wills like theirs,
The Puritan's tenacity to do;
The stubbornness of genius; holding to
Their purpose to the end,
No New-World hardship could deflect or bend;
That never doubted in their worst despairs,
But steadily on their way
Held to the last, trusting in God, who filled
Their souls with fire of faith that helped them build
A country, greater than had ever thrilled
Man's wildest dreams, or entered in
His highest hopes. 'Twas thins that helped them win
In spite of danger and distress,
Through darkness and the din
Of winds and waves, unto a wilderness,
Savage, unbounded, pathless as the sea,
That said, 'Behold me! I am free!'
Giving itself to them for greater things
Than filled their souls with dim imaginings.

IV.

Let History record their stalwart names,
And catalogue their fortitude, whence grew,
Swiftly as running flames,
Cities and civilazation:
How from a meeting-house and school,
A few log-huddled cabins, Freedom drew
Her rude beginnings. Every pioneer station,
Each settlemeat, though primitive of tool,
Had in it then the making of a Nation;
Had in it then the roofing of the plains
With tragic; and the piercing through and through
Of forests with the iron veins
Of industry.
Would I could make you see
How these, laboriously,
These founders of New England, every hour
Faced danger, death, and misery,
Conquering the wilderness;
With supernatural power
Changing its features; all its savage glower
Of wild barbarity, fierce hate, duress,
To something human, something that could bless
Mankind with peace and lift its heart's elation;
Something at last that stood
For universal brotherhood,
Astonishing the world, a mighty Nation,
Hewn from the solitude.
Iron of purpose as of faith and daring,
And of indomitable will,
With axe and hymn-book still I see them faring,
The Saxon Spirit of Conquest at their side
With sword and flintlock; still I see them stride,
As to some Roundhead rhyme,
Adown the aisles of Time.

V.

Can praise be simply said of such as these?
Such men as Standish, Winthrop, Endicott?
Such souls as Roger Conant and John White?
Rugged and great as trees,
The oaks of that New World with which their lot
Was cast forever, proudly to remain.
That world in which each name still stands, a light
To beacon the Ship of State through stormy seas.
Can praise be simply said
Of him, the younger Vane,
Puritan and patriot,
Whose dedicated head
Was laid upon the block
In thy name, Liberty!
Can praise be simply said of such as he!
Needs must the soul unlock
All gates of eloquence to sing of these.
Such periods,
Such epic melodies,
As holds the utterance of the earlier gods,
The lords of song, one needs
To sing the praise of these!
No feeble music, tinklings frail of glass;
No penny trumpetings; twitterings of brass,
The moment's effort, shak'n from pigmy bells,
Ephemeral drops from small Pierian wells,
With which the Age relieves a barren hour.
But such large music, such melodious power,
As have our cataracts,
Pouring the iron facts,
The giant acts
Of these: such song as have our rock-ridged deep
And mountain steeps,
When winds, like clanging eagles, sweep the storm
On tossing wood and farm:
Such eloquence as in the torrent leaps,
Where the hoarse canyon sleeps,
Holding the heart with its terrific charm,
Carrying its roaring message to the town,
To voice their high achievement and renown.

VI.

Long, long ago, beneath heaven's stormy slope,
In deeds of faith and hope,
Our fathers laid Freedom's foundations here,
And raised, invisible, vast,
Embodying naught of doubt or fear,
A monument whose greatness shall outlast
The future, as the past,
Of all the Old World's dynasties and kings.
A symbol of all things
That we would speak, but cannot say in words,
Of those who first began our Nation here,
Behold, we now would rear!
A different monument! a thought, that girds
Itself with granite; dream made visible
In rock and bronze to tell
To all the Future what here once befell;
Here where, unknown to them,
A tree took root; a tree of wondrous stem;
The tree of high ideals, which has grown,
And has not withered since its seed was sown,
Was planted here by them in this new soil,
Who watered it with tears and blood and toil:
An heritage we mean to hold,
Keeping it stanch and beautiful as of old.
For never a State,
Or People, yet was great
Without its great ideals; branch and root
Of the deep tree of life where bud and blow
The dreams, the thoughts, that grow
To deeds, the glowing fruit.

VII.

The morn, that breaks its heart of gold
Above the purple hills;
The eve, that spills
Its nautilus splendor where the sea is rolled;
The night, that leads the vast procession in
Of stars and dreams,
The beauty that shall never die or pass:
The winds, that spin
Of rain the misty mantles of the grass,
And thunder-raiment of the mountain-streams;
The sunbeams, needling with gold the dusk
Green cowls of ancient woods;
The shadows, thridding, veiled with musk,
The moon-pathed solitudes,
Call to my Fancy, saying, 'Follow! follow!'
Till, following, I see,
Fair as a cascade in a rainbowed hollow,
A dream, a shape, take form,
Clad on with every charm,
The vision of that Ideality,
Which lured the pioneer in wood and hill,
And beckoned him from earth and sky;
The dream that cannot die,
Their children's children did fulfill,
In stone and iron and wood,
Out of the solitude,
And by a forthright act
Create a mighty fact
A Nation, now that stands
Clad on with hope and beauty, strength and song,
Eternal, young, and strong,
Planting her heel on Wrong,
Her starry banner in triumphant hands....
Within her face the rose
Of Alleghany dawns;
Limbed with Alaskan snows,
Floridian starlight in her eyes,
Eyes stern as steel yet tender as a fawn's,
And in her hair
The rapture of her river; and the dare,
As perishless as truth,
That o'er the crags of her Sierras flies,
Urging the eagle ardor through her veins,
Behold her where,
Around her radiant youth,
The spirits of the cataracts and plains,
The genii of the floods and forests, meet,
In rainbow mists circling her brow and feet:
The forces vast that sit
In session round her; powers paraclete,
That guard her presence; awful forms and fair,
Making secure her place;
Guiding her surely as the worlds through space
Do laws sidereal; edicts, thunder-lit,
Of skyed eternity, in splendor borne
On planetary wings of night and morn.

VIII.

Behold her! this is she!
Beautiful as morning on the summer sea,
Yet terrible as is the elemental gold
That cleaves the tempest and in angles clings
About its cloudy temples. Manifold
The dreams of daring in her fearless gaze,
Fixed on the future's days;
And round her brow, a strand of astral beads,
Her soul's resplendent deeds;
And at her front one star,
Refulgent hope,
Like that on morning's slope,
Beaconing the world afar.
From her high place she sees
Her long procession of accomplished acts,
Cloud-wing'd refulgences
Of thoughts in steel and stone, of marble dreams,
Lift up tremendous battlements,
Sun-blinding, built of facts;
While in her soul she seems,
Listening, to hear, as from innumerable tents,
Æonian thunder, wonder, and applause
Of all the heroic ages that are gone;
Feeling secure
That, as her Past, her Future shall endure,
As did her Cause
When redly broke the dawn
Of fierce rebellion, and, beneath its star,
The firmaments of war
Poured down infernal rain,
And North and South lay bleeding 'mid their slain.
And now, no less, shall her Cause still prevail,
More so in peace than war,
Through the thrilled wire and electric rail,
Carrying her message far;
Shaping her dream
Within the brain of steam,
That, with a myriad hands,
Labors unceasingly, and knits her lands
In firmer union; joining plain and stream
With steel; and binding shore to shore
With bands of iron; nerves and arteries,
Along whose adamant forever pour
Her concrete thoughts, her tireless energies.