But ah! this other, this that never ends,
Still climbing, luring Fancy still to climb,
As full of morals half divined as life,
Graceful, grotesque, with ever-new surprise
Of hazardous caprices sure to please;
Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern,
Imagination's very self in stone!
With one long sigh of infinite release
From pedantries past, present, or to come,
I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth.
Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream,
Builders of aspiration incomplete,
THE GOTHIC GENIUS.
FROM "THE CATHEDRAL."
SEEM to have heard it said by learned folk,
Who drench you with æsthetics till you
feel
As if all beauty were a ghastly bore,
The faucet to let loose a wash of words,
That Gothic is not Grecian, therefore worse;
But, being convinced by much experiment
How little inventiveness there is in man,
Grave copier of copies, I give thanks
For a new relish, careless to inquire
My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please-
Nobly I mean, nor renegade to art.
The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness,
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,
The one thing finished in this hasty world-
For ever finished, though the barbarous pit,
Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout
As if a miracle could be encored.
So more consummate, souls self-confident,
Who felt your own thought worthy of record
In monumental pomp! No Grecian drop
Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred thrill,
After long exile, to the mother tongue.
The rich man's son inherits wants,
His stomach craves for dainty fare;
With sated heart he hears the pants
Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare,
And wearies in his easy chair;
A heritage, it seems to me.
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.
What doth the poor man's son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
What doth the poor man's son inherit? Wishes o'erjoy'd with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,
Content that from employment springs,
A heart that in his labor sings;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
What doth the poor man's son inherit?
A patience learn'd of being poor,
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it,
A fellow-feeling that is sure
To make the outcast bless his door;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
O rich man's son! there is a toil,
That with all others level stands;
Large charity doth never soil,
But only whiten, soft, white hands,—
This is the best crop from thy lands;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being rich to hold in fee.
O poor man's son! scorn not thy state; There is worse weariness than thine, In merely being rich and great;
Toil only gives the soul to shine,
And makes rest fragrant and benign;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.
Both, heirs to some six feet of sod,
Are equal in the earth at last;
Both, children of the same dear God,
Prove title to your heirship vast
By record of a well-fill'd past;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Well worth a life to hold in fee.
HE busy world shoves angrily aside
Is call'd for by the instinct of mankind;
The man who stands with arms akimbo set, Nor think I that God's world will fall apart Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task mark'd
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfill'd.
Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds;
Reason and Government, like two broad seas,
Yearn for each other with outstretched arms
Across this narrow isthmus of the throne,
And roll their white surf higher every day.
One age moves onward, and the next builds up
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood
The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,
Rearing from out the forests they had fell'd
The goodly framework of a fairer state;
The builder's trowel and the settler's axe
Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;
Ours is the harder task, yet not the less
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil
From the choice spirits of the after-time.
The field lies wide before us, where to reap
The easy harvest of a deathless name,
Though with no better sickles than our swords.
My soul is not a palace of the past,
Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate, quake,
Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse,
That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit.
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;
Then let it come: I have no dread of what
Because we tear a parchment more or less.
Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour:
Her mirror is turn'd forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.
He who would win the name of truly great
Must understand his own age and the next,
And make the present ready to fulfil
Its prophecy, and with the future merge
Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave.
The future works out great men's destinies
The present is enough for common souls,
Who, never looking forward, are indeed
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age
Are petrified forever: better those
Who lead the blind old giant by the hand
From out the pathless desert where he
gropes,
And set him onward in his darksome way.
I do not fear to follow out the truth,
Albeit along the precipice's edge.
Let us speak plain: there is more force in names
Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep
Its throne a whole age longer if it skulk
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name.
Let us all call tyrants tyrants, and maintain
That only freedom comes by grace of God,
And all that comes not by His grace must fall;
For men in earnest have no time to waste
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.
EAR common flower, that grow'st beside the
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold. First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth-thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;
'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at GOD's value, but pass by
The offer'd wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my trophies and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time;
Not in mid June the golden-cuirass'd bee
Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tint,
His conquer'd Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass-
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways-
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind-of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap-and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood's earliest thoughts are link'd with
thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin's
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listen'd as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he did bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears, When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth Nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of GoD's book.
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