Kitabı oku: «Sonnets and Canzonets», sayfa 4

 
Sweet disposition, and thy gentle voice,
Make every heart, full soon thy close ally,
Respect thy wishes, thine unspoken choice, —
Hastening, unbidden, therewith to comply;
They in thy cheerful countenance rejoice,
Kindness unfailing, and quick sympathy.
Peacemaker thou, with equanimity
And aspirations far above thy care,
Leavest no duty slighted or undone,
Living for thy dear kindred, always there,
Faithful as rising and as setting sun.
Can I of lovelier mansion be possest,
Than in thy heart to dwell a welcome guest?
 

 
“Stern daughter of the voice of God!
O Duty, if that name thou love,
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou who art victory and law,
When empty terrors overawe;
And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity!”
 

Wordsworth.

XVI

 
When I remember with what buoyant heart,
Midst war’s alarms and woes of civil strife,
In youthful eagerness, thou didst depart,
At peril of thy safety, peace, and life,
To nurse the wounded soldier, swathe the dead —
How piercèd soon by fever’s poisoned dart,
And brought unconscious home, with wildered head —
Thou, ever since, mid languor and dull pain,
To conquer fortune, cherish kindred dear,
Hast with grave studies vexed a sprightly brain,
In myriad households kindled love and cheer;
Ne’er from thyself by Fame’s loud trump beguiled,
Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere: —
I press thee to my heart, as Duty’s faithful child.
 

 
“In deepest passions of my grief-swoll’n breast,
Sweet soul, this only comfort seizeth me,
That so few years should make thee so much blest,
And give such wings to reach eternity.”
 

Brown’s Shepherd’s Pipe.

XVII

 
’T was not permitted thee the Fates to please,
And with survivors share our happier day;
For smitten early wast thou by disease,
Whilst with thy sisters thou didst smile and play.
Wasted by pains and lingering decay,
Life’s glowing currents at the source did freeze;
Yet, ere the angel summoned thee away,
Above thy cheerful couch affection’s ray
Did brightly shine, and all thy sufferings ease.
Dear child of grace! so patient and so strong,
Bound to thy duty by quick sympathy,
They did our hearts irreparable wrong
To break the promise of thy infancy;
Ah me! life is not life, deprived of thee.
 

 
“Will’t ne’er be morning? will that promised light
Ne’er break, and clear these clouds of night?
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day,
Whose conquering ray
May chase these fogs: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.”
 

Quarles.

XVIII

LOVE’S MORROW

I

 
It was but yesterday
That all was bright and fair:
Came over the sea,
So merrily,
News from my darling there.
Now over the sea
Comes hither to me
Knell of despair, —
“No more, no longer there!”
 

II

 
Ah! gentle May,
Couldst thou not stay?
Why hurriedst thou so swift away?
No – not the same —
Nor can it be —
That lovely name —
Ever again what once it was to me.
It cannot, cannot be
That lovely name to me.
 

III

 
I cannot think her dead,
So lately, sweetly wed;
She who had tasted bliss,
A mother’s virgin kiss,
Rich gifts conferred to bless
With costliest happiness,
Nobility and grace
To ornament her place.
 

IV

 
Broken the golden band,
Severed the silken strand,
Ye sisters four!
Still to me two remain,
And two have gone before:
Our loss, her gain, —
And He who gave can all restore.
And yet – Oh! why,
My heart doth cry,
Why take her thus away?
 

V

 
I wake in tears and sorrow:
Wearily I say,
“Come, come, fair morrow,
And chase my grief away!”
Night-long I say,
“Haste, haste, fair morrow,
And bear my grief away!”
All night long,
My sad, sad song.
 

VI

 
“Comes not the welcome morrow,”
My boding heart doth say;
Still grief from grief doth borrow;
“My child is far away.”
Still as I pray
The deeper swells my sorrow.
Break, break! The risen day
Takes not my grief away.
 

VII

 
Full well I know,
Joy’s spring is fathomless, —
Its fountains overflow
To cheer and bless,
And underneath our grief
Well forth and give relief.
Transported May!
Thou couldst not stay;
Who gave, took thee away.
Come, child, and whisper peace to me,
Say, must I wait, or come to thee?
I list to hear
Thy message clear.
 

VIII

 
“Cease, cease, new grief to borrow!”
Last night I heard her say;
“For sorrow hath no morrow,
’T is born of yesterday.
Translated thou shalt be,
My cloudless daylight see,
And bathe, as I, in fairest morrows endlessly.”
 

 
“Shall not from these remains,
From this low mound, dear ashes of the dead,
The violet spring?”
 

Persius.

XIX

 
O Death! thou utterest deeper speech,
A tenderer, truer tone,
Than all our languages can reach,
Though all were voiced in one.
 
 
Thy glance is deep, and, far beyond
All that our eyes do see,
Assures to fairest hopes and fond
Their immortality.
 

 
Sing, sing, the Immortals,
The Ancients of days,
Ever crowding the portals
Of Time’s peopled ways;
These Babes ever stealing
Into Eden’s glad feeling,
The fore-world revealing,
God’s face ne’er concealing.
 

XX

 
Voyager across the seas,
In my arms thy form I press;
Come, my Baby, me to please,
Blue-eyed nurseling, motherless!
 
 
All is strange and beautiful,
Every sense finds glad surprise,
Life is lovely, wonderful,
Faces fair, and beaming eyes.
 
 
Safe, ye angels, keep this child,
Life-long guard her innocence,
Winsome ways, and temper mild;
Heaven, our home, be her defence!
 

 
“O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?”
 

Shakespeare.

XXI

 
Dear Heart! if aught to human love I’ve owed
For noble furtherance of the good and fair;
Climbed I, by bold emprise, the dizzying stair
To excellence, and was by thee approved,
In memory cherished and the more beloved;
If fortune smiled, and late-won liberty, —
’T was thy kind favor all, thy generous legacy.
Nor didst thou spare thy large munificence
Me here to pleasure amply and maintain,
But conjured from suspicion and mischance,
Exile, misapprehension, cold disdain,
For my loved cloud-rapt dream, supremacy;
To bright reality transformed romance,
Crowning with smiles the hard-earned victory.
 

 
“The hills were reared, the valleys scooped in vain,
If Learning’s altars vanish from the plain.”
 

Channing.

XXII

 
Calm vale of comfort, peace, and industry,
Well doth thy name thy homebred traits express! —
Considerate people, neighborly and free,
Proud of their monuments, their ancestry,
Their circling river’s quiet loveliness,
Their noble townsmen’s fame and history.
Nor less I glory in each goodly trait,
Child of another creed, a stricter State;
I chose thee for my haunt in troublous time,
My home in days of late prosperity,
And laud thee now in this familiar rhyme;
Here on thy bosom the last summons wait
To scenes, if lovelier, still reflecting thee,
Resplendent both in hope and memory.
 

PART II.
SONNETS

 
“In sundry moods, ’t was pastime to be bound
 Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of groud.”
 

Wordsworth.

“I like that friendship which, by soft gentle pauses, steals upon the affections and grows mellow with time, by reciprocal offices and trials of love; that friendship is like to last long, and never shrink in the wetting.”

Howel.

I

 
In Youth’s glad morning, when the rising East
Glows golden with assurance of success,
And life itself ’s a rare continual feast,
Enjoyed the more if meditated less,
’T is then that friendship’s pleasures chiefly bless,
As if without beginning, – ne’er to end, —
So rich the season and so dear the friend,
When thou and I went wandering hand in hand;
Mine wert thou in our years of earliest prime,
Studious at home, or to the southern land
Adventuring bold; again in later time,
Thy kindly service, always at command
Of calm discretion, and abounding sense,
Prompted and showed the path to excellence.
 

 
“Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence!
That, with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of man’s affections more than all their swords;
Shall we not offer to thy excellence
The richest treasure that our wit affords?
Or should we careless come behind the rest
In power of words that go before in worth;
When all that ever hotter spirits exprest
Comes bettered by the patience of the North?”
 

Daniel.

II

 
My thought revives at utterance of thy name, —
Doth high behavior, sweet discourse recall,
Lit with emotion’s quick and quenchless flame,
Imagination interfused through all;
Then peals thy voice melodious on mine ear,
As when grave anthems thou didst well recite, —
Laodamia’s vision sad and dear,
Or “Thanatopsis,” or “Hail, Holy Light!”
Thou true Professor, gifted to dispense
New pathos e’en to Channing’s eloquence;
If mother tongue they fail to speak or write,
Nor Greek nor Latin draw thy pupils thence;
Such culture, taught by the far Northern sea,
This scholar brings, New England, home to thee.
 

 
“Ascending soul, sing Pæan.”
 

Oracle.

III

 
Christian beloved! devoid of art and wile, —
Who lovest thy Lord so well, with heart so true,
That neither mist nor mote of worldly guile
May clog thy vision, nor confuse the view
Of that transcendent and commanding style
Of god-like manhood; which had dazed long while
Each purblind brother’s idol-loving eye.
Sense overpowering doth the soul belie:
Thou the soul’s errand and due place dost see,
Its heavenly features to thy ken disclose,
As when in Nazareth thy Lord uprose,
The Father’s image in Humanity.
A holy service thine, interpreter
Of Lazarus rising from the sepulchre.
 

 
“The virtuous mind that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion, Conscience.”
 

Milton.

IV

 
Channing! my Mentor whilst my thought was young,
And I the votary of fair liberty, —
How hung I then upon thy glowing tongue,
And thought of love and truth as one with thee!
Thou wast the inspirer of a nobler life,
When I with error waged unequal strife,
And from its coils thy teaching set me free.
Be ye, his followers, to his leading true,
Nor privilege covet, nor the wider sway;
But hold right onward in his loftier way,
As best becomes, and is his rightful due.
If learning ’s yours, – gifts God doth least esteem, —
Beyond all gifts was his transcendent view;
O realize his Pentecostal dream!
 

“Without oblivion there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, then the general soul is clear, melodious, and true.”

Carlyle.

V

 
Daughter of Memory! who her watch doth keep
O’er dark Oblivion’s land of shade and dream,
Peers down into the realm of ancient Sleep,
Where Thought uprises with a sudden gleam
And lights the devious path ’twixt Be and Seem;
Mythologist! that dost thy legend steep
Plenteously with opiate and anodyne,
Inweaving fact with fable, line with line,
Entangling anecdote and episode,
Mindful of all that all men meant or said, —
We follow, pleased, thy labyrinthine road,
By Ariadne’s skein and lesson led:
For thou hast wrought so excellently well,
Thou drop’st more casual truth than sages tell.
 

 
“Not on the store of sprightly wine,
Nor plenty of delicious meats,
Though gracious Nature did design
To court us with perpetual treats;
’Tis not on these we for content depend,
So much as on the shadow of a friend.”
 

Menander.

VI

 
Misfortune to have lived not knowing thee!
’T were not high living, nor to noblest end,
Who, dwelling near, learned not sincerity,
Rich friendship’s ornament that still doth lend
To life its consequence and propriety.
Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.
Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be
A scholar in thy university.
 

 
“He shall not seek to weave,
In weak, unhappy times,
Efficacious rhymes;
Wait his returning strength.
Bird, that from the nadir’s floor
To the zenith’s top can soar,
The soaring orbit of the Muse exceeds that journey’s length.”
 

VII

 
Hierophant, and lyrist of the soul!
Clear insight thine of universal mind;
While from its crypts the nascent Powers unrol,
And represent to consciousness the Whole.
Each in its order seeks its natural kind,
These latent or apparent, stir or sleep,
Watchful o’er widening fields of airy space,
Or slumbering sightless in the briny deep; —
Thou, far above their shows, servant of Grace,
Tread’st the bright way from Spirit down to Sense,
Interpreting all symbols to thy race, —
Commanding vistas of the fair Immense,
And glimpses upward far, where, sons of Heaven,
Sit in Pantheon throned the Sacred Seven.
 

 
“The princely mind, that can
Teach man to keep a God in man,—
And when wise poets would search out to see
Good men, behold them all in thee!”
 

VIII

 
Pleased, I recall those hours, so fair and free,
When all the long forenoons we two did toss
From lip to lip, in lively colloquy,
Plato, Plotinus, or famed schoolman’s gloss,
Disporting in rapt thought and ecstasy.
Then by the tilting rail Millbrook we cross,
And sally through the fields to Walden wave,
Plunging within the cove, or swimming o’er;
Through woodpaths wending, he with gesture quick
Rhymes deftly in mid-air with circling stick,
Skims the smooth pebbles from the leafy shore,
Or deeper ripples raises as we lave;
Nor slumb’rous pillow touches at late night,