And nevermore return the Age of Gold. 65
PANDORA (waking).
A voice said in my sleep: “Do not delay:
Do not delay; the golden moments fly!
The oracle hath forbidden; yet not thee
Doth it forbid, but Epimetheus only!”
I am alone. These faces in the mirrors 70
Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself;
They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me,
Save the all-seeing Gods, who, knowing good
And knowing evil, have created me
Such as I am, and filled me with desire 75
Of knowing good and evil like themselves.
She approaches the chest.
I hesitate no longer. Weal or woe,
Or life or death, the moment shall decide.
She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest, and fills the room. PANDORA falls senseless on the floor. Storm without.
CHORUS OF DREAMS FROM THE GATE OF HORN.
Yes, the moment shall decide!
It already hath decided; 80
And the secret once confided
To the keeping of the Titan
Now is flying far and wide,
Whispered, told on every side,
To disquiet and to frighten. 85
Fever of the heart and brain,
Sorrow, pestilence, and pain,
Moans of anguish, maniac laughter,
All the evils that hereafter
Shall afflict and vex mankind, 90
All into the air have risen
From the chambers of their prison;
Only Hope remains behind.
VIII.
In the Garden
EPIMETHEUS.
The storm is past, but it hath left behind it
Ruin and desolation. All the walks
Are strewn with shattered boughs; the birds are silent;
The flowers, downtrodden by the wind, lie dead;
The swollen rivulet sobs with secret pain; 5
The melancholy reeds whisper together
As if some dreadful deed had been committed
They dare not name, and all the air is heavy
With an unspoken sorrow! Premonitions,
Foreshadowings of some terrible disaster 10
Oppress my heart. Ye Gods, avert the omen!
PANDORA, coming from the house.
O Epimetheus, I no longer dare
To lift mine eyes to thine, nor hear thy voice,
Being no longer worthy of thy love.
EPIMETHEUS.
What hast thou done?
PANDORA.
Forgive me not, but kill me. 15
EPIMETHEUS.
What hast thou done?
PANDORA.
I pray for death, not pardon.
EPIMETHEUS.
What hast thou done?
PANDORA.
I dare not speak of it.
EPIMETHEUS.
Thy pallor and thy silence terrify me!
PANDORA.
I have brought wrath and ruin on thy house!
My heart hath braved the oracle that guarded 20
The fatal secret from us, and my hand
Lifted the lid of the mysterious chest!
EPIMETHEUS.
Then all is lost! I am indeed undone.
PANDORA.
I pray for punishment, and not for pardon.
EPIMETHEUS.
Mine is the fault, not thine. On me shall fall 25
The vengeance of the Gods, for I betrayed
Their secret when, in evil hour, I said
It was a secret; when, in evil hour,
I left thee here alone to this temptation.
Why did I leave thee?
PANDORA.
Why didst thou return? 30
Eternal absence would have been to me
The greatest punishment. To be left alone
And face to face with my own crime, had been
Just retribution. Upon me, ye Gods,
Let all your vengeance fall!
EPIMETHEUS.
On thee and me. 35
I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before. 40
PANDORA.
Pity me not; pity is degradation.
Love me and kill me.
EPIMETHEUS.
Beautiful Pandora!
Thou art a Goddess still!
PANDORA.
I am a woman;
And the insurgent demon in my nature,
That made me brave the oracle, revolts 45
At pity and compassion. Let me die;
What else remains for me?
EPIMETHEUS.
Youth, hope, and love:
To build a new life on a ruined life,
To make the future fairer than the past,
And make the past appear a troubled dream. 50
Even now in passing through the garden walks
Upon the ground I saw a fallen nest
Ruined and full of rain; and over me
Beheld the uncomplaining birds already
Busy in building a new habitation. 55
PANDORA.
Auspicious omen!
EPIMETHEUS.
May the Eumenides
Put out their torches and behold us not,
And fling away their whips of scorpions
And touch us not.
PANDORA.
Me let them punish.
Only through punishment of our evil deeds, 60
Only through suffering, are we reconciled
To the immortal Gods and to ourselves.
CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES.
Never shall souls like these
Escape the Eumenides,
The daughters dark of Acheron and Night! 65
Unquenched our torches glare,
Our scourges in the air
Send forth prophetic sounds before they smite.
Never by lapse of time
The soul defaced by crime 70
Into its former self returns again;
For every guilty deed
Holds in itself the seed
Of retribution and undying pain.
Never shall be the loss 75
Restored, till Helios
Hath purified them with his heavenly fires;
Then what was lost is won,
And the new life begun,
Kindled with nobler passions and desires. 80
Birds of Passage: Flight the Third.
Fata Morgana
Contained in the volume entitled Aftermath, 1873.
O SWEET illusions of Song,
That tempt me everywhere,
In the lonely fields, and the throng
Of the crowded thoroughfare!
I approach, and ye vanish away, 5
I grasp you, and ye are gone;
But ever by night and by day,
The melody soundeth on.
As the weary traveller sees
In desert or prairie vast, 10
Blue lakes, overhung with trees,
That a pleasant shadow cast;
Fair towns with turrets high,
And shining roofs of gold,
That vanish as he draws nigh, 15
Like mists together rolled, —
So I wander and wander along,
And forever before me gleams
The shining city of song,
In the beautiful land of dreams. 20
But when I would enter the gate
Of that golden atmosphere,
It is gone, and I wonder and wait
For the vision to reappear.
The Haunted Chamber
EACH heart has its haunted chamber,
Where the silent moonlight falls!
O
n the floor are mysterious footsteps,
There are whispers along the walls!
And mine at times is haunted 5
By phantoms of the Past,
As motionless as shadows
By the silent moonlight cast.
A form sits by the window,
That is not seen by day, 10
For as soon as the dawn approaches
It vanishes away.
It sits there in the moonlight,
Itself as pale and still,
And points with its airy finger 15
Across the window-sill.
Without, before the window,
There stands a gloomy pine,
Whose boughs wave upward and downward
As wave these thoughts of mine. 20
And underneath its branches
Is the grave of a little child,
Who died upon life’s threshold,
And never wept nor smiled.
What are ye, O pallid phantoms! 25
That haunt my troubled brain?
That vanish when day approaches,
And at night return again?
What are ye, O pallid phantoms!
But the statues without breath, 30
That stand on the bridge overarching
The silent river of death?
The Meeting
AFTER so long an absence
At last we meet again:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
Or does it give us pain?
The tree of life has been shaken, 5
And but few of us linger now,
Like the Prophet’s two or three berries
In the top of the uppermost bough.
We cordially greet each other
In the old, familiar tone; 10
And we think, though we do not say it,
How old and gray he is grown!
We speak of a Merry Christmas
And many a Happy New Year;
But each in his heart is thinking 15
Of those that are not here.
We speak of friends and their fortunes,
And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
And the living alone seem dead. 20
And at last we hardly distinguish
Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
Steals over our merriest jests.
Vox Populi
WHEN Mazárvan the Magician
Journeyed westward through Cathay,
Nothing heard he but the praises
Of Badoura on his way.
But the lessening rumor ended 5
When he came to Khaledan,
There the folk were talking only
Of Prince Camaralzaman.
So it happens with the poets:
Every province hath its own; 10
Camaralzaman is famous
Where Badoura is unknown.
The Castle-Builder
A GENTLE boy, with soft and silken locks,
A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes,
A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks,
And towers that touch imaginary skies.
A fearless rider on his father’s knee, 5
An eager listener unto stories told
At the Round Table of the nursery,
Of heroes and adventures manifold.
There will be other towers for thee to build;
There will be other steeds for thee to ride; 10
There will be other legends, and all filled
With greater marvels and more glorified.
Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,
Rising and reaching upward to the skies;
Listen to voices in the upper air, 15
Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.
Changed
“November 25, 1847. [In Portland.] After church, walked with Fessenden to the ‘gallows’ that used to be, — a fine hillside, looking down and over the cove.” This was the scene of Changed, but the poem was not written till 1858, when the poet was on a visit to Portland.
FROM the outskirts of the town,
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down,
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood. 5
Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene. 10
Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run. 15
The Challenge
I HAVE a vague remembrance
Of a story, that is told
In some ancient Spanish legend
Or chronicle of old.
It was when brave King Sanchez 5
Was before Zamora slain,
And his great besieging army
Lay encamped upon the plain.
Don Diego de Ordoñez
Sallied forth in front of all, 10
And shouted loud his challenge
To the warders on the wall.
All the people of Zamora,
Both the born and the unborn,
As traitors did he challenge 15
With taunting words of scorn.
The living, in their houses,
And in their graves, the dead!
And the waters of their rivers,
And their wine, and oil, and bread! 20
There is a greater army,
That besets us round with strife,
A starving, numberless army,
At all the gates of life.
The poverty-stricken millions 25
Who challenge our wine and bread,
And impeach us all as traitors,
Both the living and the dead.
And whenever I sit at the banquet,
Where the feast and song are high, 30
Amid the mirth and the music
I can hear that fearful cry.
And hollow and haggard faces
Look into the lighted hall,
And wasted hands are extended 35
To catch the crumbs that fall.
For within there is light and plenty,
And odors fill the air;
But without there is cold and darkness,
And hunger and despair. 40
And there in the camp of famine
In wind and cold and rain,
Christ, the great Lord of the army,
Lies dead upon the plain!
The Brook and the Wave
THE BROOKLET came from the mountain,
As sang the bard of old,
Running with feet of silver
Over the sands of gold!
Far away in the briny ocean 5
There rolled a turbulent wave,
Now singing along the sea-beach,
Now howling along the cave.
And the brooklet has found the billow,
Though they flowed so far apart, 10
And has filled with its freshness and sweetness
That turbulent, bitter heart!
Aftermath
This poem, placed last in the book, gave title to the volume published in 1873, which contained the third part of Tales of a Wayside Inn and the third flight of Birds of Passage. The completion of the Tales on his sixty-sixth birthday may have given rise to this poem.
WHEN the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow, 5
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.
Not the sweet, new grass with
flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom; 10
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
The Hanging Of The Crane
“One morning in the spring of 1867,” writes Mr. T. B. Aldrich, “Mr. Longfellow came to the little home in Pinckney Street [Boston], where we had set up housekeeping in the light of our honeymoon. As we lingered a moment at the dining-room door, Mr. Longfellow turning to me said, ‘Ah, Mr. Aldrich, your small round table will not always be closed. By and by you will find new young faces clustering about it; as years go on, leaf after leaf will be added until the time comes when the young guests will take flight, one by one, to build nests of their own elsewhere. Gradually the long table will shrink to a circle again, leaving two old people sitting there alone together. This is the story of life, the sweet and pathetic poem of the fireside. Make an idyl of it. I give the idea to you.’ Several months afterward, I received a note from Mr. Longfellow in which he expressed a desire to use this motif in case I had done nothing in the matter. The theme was one peculiarly adapted to his sympathetic handling, and out of it grew The Hanging of the Crane.” Just when the poem was written does not appear, but its first publication was in the New York Ledger, March 28, 1874. Mr. Longfellow’s old friend, Mr. Sam. Ward, had heard the poem, and offered to secure it for Mr. Robert Bonner, the proprietor of the Ledger, “touched,” as he wrote to Mr. Longfellow, “by your kindness to poor —— , and haunted by the idea of increasing handsomely your noble charity fund.” Mr. Bonner paid the poet the sum of three thousand dollars for this poem.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 75
