When you gave it me under the pines, 5
I dreamed these gems from the mines
Of Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine
Would glimmer as thoughts in the lines;
That this iron link from the chain
Of Bonnivard might retain 10
Some verse of the Poet who sang
Of the prisoner and his pain;
That this wood from the frigate’s mast
Might write me a rhyme at last,
As it used to write on the sky 15
The song of the sea and the blast.
But motionless as I wait,
Like a Bishop lying in state
Lies the Pen, with its mitre of gold,
And its jewels inviolate. 20
Then must I speak, and say
That the light of that summer day
In the garden under the pines
Shall not fade and pass away.
I shall see you standing there, 25
Caressed by the fragrant air,
With the shadow on your face,
And the sunshine on your hair.
I shall hear the sweet low tone
Of a voice before unknown, 30
Saying, “This is from me to you —
From me, and to you alone.”
And in words not idle and vain
I shall answer and thank you again
For the gift, and the grace of the gift, 35
O beautiful Helen of Maine!
And forever this gift will be
As a blessing from you to me,
As a drop of the dew of your youth
On the leaves of an aged tree. 40
Robert Burns
I SEE amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
Sings at his task
So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock’s song we hear, or his, 5
Nor care to ask.
For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
Than sheaves of grain;
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye, 10
The plover’s call, the curlew’s cry,
Sing in his brain.
Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
Beside the stream 15
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,
The brighter seem.
He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms; 20
He feels the force,
The treacherous undertow and stress
Of wayward passions, and no less
The keen remorse.
At moments, wrestling with his fate, 25
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
The brush-wood, hung
Above the tavern door, lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall
Upon his tongue. 30
But still the music of his song
Rises o’er all, elate and strong;
Its master-chords
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood,
Its discords but an interlude 35
Between the words.
And then to die so young and leave
Unfinished what he might achieve!
Yet better sure
Is this, than wandering up and down, 40
An old man in a country town,
Infirm and poor.
For now he haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
Guides every plough; 45
He sits beside each ingle-nook,
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough.
His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light 50
From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!
Helen of Tyre
WHAT phantom is this that appears
Through the purple mists of the years,
Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre, 5
The town in the midst of the seas.
O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
And the Israelites that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass, 10
Look up as they see her pass,
And murmur “Jezebel!”
Then another phantom is seen
At her side, in a gray gabardine,
With beard that floats to his waist; 15
It is Simon Magus, the Seer;
He speaks, and she pauses to hear
The words he utters in haste.
He says: “From this evil fame,
From this life of sorrow and shame, 20
I will lift thee and make thee mine;
Thou hast been Queen Candace,
And Helen of Troy, and shalt be
The Intelligence Divine!”
Oh, sweet as the breath of morn, 25
To the fallen and forlorn
Are whispered words of praise;
For the famished heart believes
The falsehood that tempts and deceives,
And the promise that betrays. 30
So she follows from land to land
The wizard’s beckoning hand,
As a leaf is blown by the gust,
Till she vanishes into night.
O reader, stoop down and write 35
With thy finger in the dust.
O town in the midst of the seas,
With thy rafts of cedar trees,
Thy merchandise and thy ships,
Thou, too, art become as naught, 40
A phantom, a shadow, a thought,
A name upon men’s lips.
Elegiac
DARK is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.
Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean; 5
With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.
Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea! 10
All have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead,
Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.
Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsatisfied longings;
Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams;
While in a haven of rest my heart is riding at anchor, 15
Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust!
Old St. David’s at Radnor
At the time of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, Mr. Longfellow, who was a visitor, established himself with his family at Rosemont, a few miles from the city, in the immediate neighborhood of which is the old church of St. David’s, the outgrowth of an English mission of Queen Anne’s time.
WHAT an image of peace and rest
Is this little church among its graves!
All is so quiet; the troubled breast,
The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed,
Here may find the repose it craves. 5
See, how the ivy climbs and expands
Over this humble hermitage,
And seems to caress with its little hands
The rough, gray stones, as a child that stands
Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age! 10
Y
ou cross the threshold; and dim and small
Is the space that serves for the Shepherd’s Fold;
The narrow aisle, the bare, white wall,
The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall,
Whisper and say: “Alas! we are old.” 15
Herbert’s chapel at Bemerton
Hardly more spacious is than this;
But poet and pastor, blent in one,
Clothed with a splendor, as of the sun,
That lowly and holy edifice. 20
It is not the wall of stone without
That makes the building small or great,
But the soul’s light shining round about,
And the faith that overcometh doubt,
And the love that stronger is than hate. 25
Were I a pilgrim in search of peace,
Were I a pastor of Holy Church,
More than a Bishop’s diocese
Should I prize this place of rest and release
From further longing and further search. 30
Here would I stay, and let the world
With its distant thunder roar and roll;
Storms do not rend the sail that is furled;
Nor like a dead leaf, tossed and whirled
In an eddy of wind, is the anchored soul. 35
FOLK-SONGS
The Sifting of Peter
IN St. Luke’s Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene 5
Are shifted.
Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat to sift us, and we all
Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great, 10
Is by his station or estate
Exempted.
No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
Can enter; 15
No heart hath armor so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
Its centre.
For all at last the cock will crow,
Who hear the warning voice, but go 20
Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
And bleeding.
One look of that pale, suffering face 25
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
Of weakness;
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
To meekness. 30
Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache;
The reddening scars remain, and make
Confession;
Lost innocence returns no more;
We are not what we were before 35
Transgression.
But noble souls, through dust and heat,
Rise from disaster and defeat
The stronger;
And conscious still of the divine 40
Within them, lie on earth supine
No longer.
Maiden and Weathercock
MAIDEN.
O WEATHERCOCK on the village spire,
With your golden feathers all on fire,
Tell me, what can you see from your perch
Above there over the tower of the church?
WEATHERCOCK.
I can see the roofs and the streets below, 5
And the people moving to and fro,
And beyond, without either roof or street,
The great salt sea, and the fishermen’s fleet.
I can see a ship come sailing in
Beyond the headlands and harbor of Lynn, 10
And a young man standing on the deck,
With a silken kerchief round his neck.
Now he is pressing it to his lips,
And now he is kissing his finger-tips,
And now he is lifting and waving his hand, 15
And blowing the kisses toward the land.
MAIDEN.
Ah, that is the ship from over the sea,
That is bringing my lover back to me,
Bringing my lover so fond and true,
Who does not change with the wind like you. 20
WEATHERCOCK.
If I change with all the winds that blow,
It is only because they made me so,
And people would think it wondrous strange,
If I, a Weathercock, should not change.
O pretty Maiden, so fine and fair, 25
With your dreamy eyes and your golden hair,
When you and your lover meet to-day
You will thank me for looking some other way.
The Windmill
BEHOLD! a giant am I!
Aloft here in my tower,
With my granite jaws I devour
The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,
And grind them into flour. 5
I look down over the farms;
In the fields of grain I see
The harvest that is to be,
And I fling to the air my arms,
For I know it is all for me. 10
I hear the sound of flails
Far off, from the threshing-floors
In barns, with their open doors,
And the wind, the wind in my sails,
Louder and louder roars. 15
I stand here in my place,
With my foot on the rock below,
And whichever way it may blow,
I meet it face to face
As a brave man meets his foe. 20
And while we wrestle and strive,
My master, the miller, stands
And feeds me with his hands;
For he knows who makes him thrive,
Who makes him lord of lands. 25
On Sundays I take my rest;
Church-going bells begin
Their low, melodious din;
I cross my arms on my breast,
And all is peace within. 30
The Tide rises, the Tide falls
THE TIDE rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls. 5
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls. 10
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls. 15
SONNETS
My Cathedral
LIKE two cathedral towers these stately pines
Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines; 5
No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
No sepulchre conceals a martyr’s bones,
No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread! 10
Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship without words.
The Burial of the Poet
Richard Henry Dana
IN the old churchyard of his native town,
And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
And left him to his rest and his renown.
The sno
w was falling, as if Heaven dropped down 5
White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall; —
The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
His name, as worthy of so white a crown.
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
And the broad sheet of snow is written o’er 10
With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin
With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more
Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.
Night
INTO the darkness and the hush of night
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light.
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight, 5
The unprofitable splendor and display,
The agitations, and the cares that prey
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
Molests us; all its records we erase 10
From the dull commonplace book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o’er
With trivial incidents of time and place,
And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.
L’ENVOI
The Poet and his Songs
AS the birds come in the Spring,
We know not from where;
As the stars come at evening
From depths of the air;
As the rain comes from the cloud, 5
And the brook from the ground;
As suddenly, low or loud,
Out of silence a sound;
As the grape comes to the vine,
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 84
