And all absorbed in reveries profound
Of fair Almira in the upper class,
Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,
As pure as water, and as good as bread.
And next the Deacon issued from his door, 65
In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow;
A suit of sable bombazine he wore;
His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;
There never was so wise a man before;
He seemed the incarnate “Well, I told you so!” 70
And to perpetuate his great renown
There was a street named after him in town.
These came together in the new town-hall,
With sundry farmers from the region round.
The Squire presided, dignified and tall, 75
His air impressive and his reasoning sound;
Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small;
Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found,
But enemies enough, who every one
Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun. 80
When they had ended, from his place apart
Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,
And, trembling like a steed before the start,
Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;
Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart 85
To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,
Alike regardless of their smile or frown,
And quite determined not to be laughed down.
“Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,
From his Republic banished without pity 90
The Poets; in this little town of yours,
You put to death, by means of a Committee,
The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,
The street-musicians of the heavenly city,
The birds, who make sweet music for us all 95
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.
“The thrush that carols at the dawn of day
From the green steeples of the piny wood;
The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,
Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; 100
The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray,
Flooding with melody the neighborhood;
Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng
That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song.
“You slay them all! and wherefore? for the gain 105
Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,
Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,
Scratched up at random by industrious feet,
Searching for worm or weevil after rain!
Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet 110
As are the songs these uninvited guests
Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.
“Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne’er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies 115
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught!
Whose habitations in the tree-tops even
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven! 120
“Think, every morning when the sun peeps through
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,
How jubilant the happy birds renew
Their old, melodious madrigals of love!
And when you think of this, remember too 125
‘T is always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
“Think of your woods and orchards without birds!
Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams 130
As in an idiot’s brain remembered words
Hang empty ‘mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds
Make up for the lost music, when your teams
Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more 135
The feathered gleaners follow to your door?
“What! would you rather see the incessant stir
Of insects in the windrows of the hay,
And hear the locust and the grasshopper
Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? 140
Is this more pleasant to you than the whir
Of meadow-lark, and her sweet roundelay,
Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take
Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake?
“You call them thieves and pillagers; but know, 145
They are the wingèd wardens of your farms,
Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;
Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Renders good service as your man-at-arms, 150
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
“How can I teach your children gentleness,
And mercy to the weak, and reverence
For life, which, in its weakness or excess, 155
Is still a gleam of God’s omnipotence,
Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
The selfsame light, although averted hence,
When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,
You contradict the very things I teach?” 160
With this he closed; and through the audience went
A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves;
The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent
Their yellow heads together like their sheaves;
Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment 165
Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves.
The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows,
A bounty offered for the heads of crows.
There was another audience out of reach,
Who had no voice nor vote in making laws, 170
But in the papers read his little speech,
And crowned his modest temples with applause;
They made him conscious, each one more than each,
He still was victor, vanquished in their cause.
Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee, 175
O fair Almira at the Academy!
And so the dreadful massacre began;
O’er fields and orchards, and o’er woodland crests,
The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran.
Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts, 180
Or wounded crept away from sight of man,
While the young died of famine in their nests;
A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,
The very St. Bartholomew of Birds!
The Summer came, and all the birds were dead 185
The days were like hot coals; the very ground
Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed
Myriads of caterpillars, and around
The cultivated fields and garden beds
Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found 190
No foe to check their march, till they had made
The land a desert without leaf or shade.
Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,
Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly
Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down 195
The canker-worms upon the passers-by,
Upon each woman’s bonnet, shawl, and gown,
Who shook them off with just a little cry;
They were the terror of each favorite walk,
The endless theme of all the village talk. 200
The farmers grew impatient, but a few
Confessed their errors, and would not complain,
For after all, the best
thing one can do
When it is raining, is to let it rain.
Then they repealed the law, although they knew 205
It would not call the dead to life again;
As school-boys, finding their mistake too late,
Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate.
That year in Killingworth the Autumn came
Without the light of his majestic look, 210
The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,
The illumined pages of his Doom’s-Day book.
A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,
And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,
While the wild wind went moaning everywhere, 215
Lamenting the dead children of the air!
But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,
A sight that never yet by bard was sung,
As great a wonder as it would have been
If some dumb animal had found a tongue! 220
A wagon overarched with evergreen,
Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,
All full of singing birds, came down the street,
Filling the air with music wild and sweet.
From all the country round these birds were brought, 225
By order of the town, with anxious quest,
And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought
In woods and fields the places they loved best,
Singing loud canticles, which many thought
Were satires to the authorities addressed, 230
While others, listening in green lanes, averred
Such lovely music never had been heard!
But blither still and louder carolled they
Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know
It was the fair Almira’s wedding-day, 235
And everywhere, around, above, below,
When the Preceptor bore his bride away,
Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,
And a new heaven bent over a new earth
Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth. 240
The Poet’s Tale: Finale
THE HOUR was late; the fire burned low,
The Landlord’s eyes were closed in sleep,
And near the story’s end a deep,
Sonorous sound at times was heard,
As when the distant bagpipes blow. 5
At this all laughed; the Landlord stirred,
As one awaking from a swound,
And, gazing anxiously around,
Protested that he had not slept,
But only shut his eyes, and kept 10
His ears attentive to each word.
Then all arose, and said “Good Night.”
Alone remained the drowsy Squire
To rake the embers of the fire,
And quench the waning parlor light; 15
While from the windows, here and there,
The scattered lamps a moment gleamed,
And the illumined hostel seemed
The constellation of the Bear,
Downward, athwart the misty air, 20
Sinking and setting toward the sun.
Far off the village clock struck one.
PART SECOND
Prelude II.
A COLD, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane, 5
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen 10
As a faint pallor in the sky; —
Thus cold and colorless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn, 15
And all the guests that in it lay.
Full late they slept. They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,
Disdainful of the rain outside, 20
Was strutting with a martial stride,
As if upon his thigh he wore
The famous broadsword of the Squire,
And said, “Behold me, and admire!”
Only the Poet seemed to hear, 25
In drowse or dream, more near and near
Across the border-land of sleep,
The blowing of a blithesome horn,
That laughed the dismal day to scorn;
A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels 30
Through sand and mire like stranding keels,
As from the road with sudden sweep
The Mail drove up the little steep,
And stopped beside the tavern door;
A moment stopped, and then again 35
With crack of whip and bark of dog
Plunged forward through the sea of fog,
And all was silent as before, —
All silent save the dripping rain.
Then one by one the guests came down, 40
And greeted with a smile the Squire,
Who sat before the parlor fire,
Reading the paper fresh from town.
First the Sicilian, like a bird,
Before his form appeared, was heard 45
Whistling and singing down the stair;
Then came the Student with a look
As placid as a meadow-brook;
The Theologian, still perplexed
With thoughts of this world and the next: 50
The Poet then, as one who seems
Walking in visions and in dreams;
Then the Musician, like a fair
Hyperion from whose golden hair
The radiance of the morning streams; 55
And last the aromatic Jew
Of Alicant, who, as he threw
The door wide open, on the air
Breathed round about him a perfume
Of damask roses in full bloom, 60
Making a garden of the room.
The breakfast ended, each pursued
The promptings of his various mood;
Beside the fire in silence smoked
The taciturn, impassive Jew, 65
Lost in a pleasant revery;
While, by his gravity provoked,
His portrait the Sicilian drew,
And wrote beneath it “Edrehi,
At the Red Horse in Sudbury.” 70
By far the busiest of them all,
The Theologian in the hall
Was feeding robins in a cage, —
Two corpulent and lazy birds,
Vagrants and pilferers at best, 75
If one might trust the hostler’s words,
Chief instrument of their arrest;
Two poets of the Golden Age,
Heirs of a boundless heritage
Of fields and orchards, east and west, 80
And sunshine of long summer days,
Though outlawed now and dispossessed! —
Such was the Theologian’s phrase.
Meanwhile the Student held discourse
With the Musician, on the source 85
Of all the legendary lore
Among the nations, scattered wide
Like silt and seaweed by the force
And fluctuation of the tide;
The tale repeated o’er and o’er, 90
With change of place and change of name,
Disguised, transformed, and yet the same
We’ve heard a hundred times before.
The Poet at the window mused,
And saw, as in a dream confused, 95
The countenance of the Sun, discrowned,
And haggard with a pale despair,
And saw the cloud-rack trail and drift
Before it, and the trees uplift
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Their leafless branches, and the air 100
Filled with the arrows of the rain,
And heard amid the mist below,
Like voices of distress and pain,
That haunt the thoughts of men insane,
The fateful cawings of the crow. 105
Then down the road, with mud besprent,
And drenched with rain from head to hoof,
The rain-drops dripping from his mane
And tail as from a pent-house roof,
A jaded horse, his head down bent, 110
Passed slowly, limping as he went.
The young Sicilian — who had grown
Impatient longer to abide
A prisoner, greatly mortified
To see completely overthrown 115
His plans for angling in the brook,
And, leaning o’er the bridge of stone,
To watch the speckled trout glide by,
And float through the inverted sky,
Still round and round the baited hook — 120
Now paced the room with rapid stride,
And, pausing at the Poet’s side,
Looked forth, and saw the wretched steed,
And said: “Alas for human greed,
That with cold hand and stony eye 125
Thus turns an old friend out to die,
Or beg his food from gate to gate!
This brings a tale into my mind,
Which, if you are not disinclined
To listen, I will now relate.” 130
All gave assent; all wished to hear,
Not without many a jest and jeer,
The story of a spavined steed;
And even the Student with the rest
Put in his pleasant little jest 135
Out of Malherbe, that Pegasus
Is but a horse that with all speed
Bears poets to the hospital;
While the Sicilian, self-possessed,
After a moment’s interval 140
Began his simple story thus.
The Sicilian’s Tale
The Bell of Atri
AT Atri in Abruzzo, a small town
Of ancient Roman date, but scant renown,
One of those little places that have run
Half up the hill, beneath a blazing sun,
And then sat down to rest, as if to say, 5
“I climb no farther upward, come what may,” —
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 61
