Kitabı oku: «The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851», sayfa 9

Original Poetry

OLD AGE

By Alfred B. Street

 
All day the chill bleak wind had shrieked and wailed
Through leafless forests, and o'er meadows sear;
Through the fierce sky great sable clouds had sailed;
Outlines were hard—all nature's looks were drear.
Gone, Indian Summer's bland, delicious haze,
Thickening soft nights and filming mellow days.
Then rose gray clouds; thin fluttered first the snow,
Then like loose shaken fleeces, then in dense streams
That muffled gradually all below
In pearly smoothness. Then outburst the gleams
At sunset; nature shone in flashing white,
And the last rays tinged all with rosy light.
So Life's bland Autumn o'er, may old age come
In muffling peace, and death display hope's radiant bloom.
 

THE CASTLE IN THE AIR. ¹²

By R. H. Stoddard

I

 
We have two lives about us,
Within us, and without us;
Two worlds in which we dwell,
Alternate Heaven and Hell:
Without, the sombre Real,
Within our heart of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!
I stand between the thresholds of the two,
Fettered and bound with many a heavy chain;
I strive to rend their links, but all in vain;
The False is strong, and holds me from the True.
Only in dreams my spirit wanders o'er
The starry portal of the world of bliss,
And lives the life which Fate denies in this,
Which may have once been mind, but will be, nevermore.
 

II

 
My Castle stands alone,
Away from Earth and Time,
In some diviner clime,
In Fancy's tropic zone,
Beneath its summer skies,
Where all the live-long year the summer never dies!
A stately marble pile whose pillars rise,
From sculptured bases, fluted to the dome,
With wreathéd friezes crowned, all carven nice
With pendant leaves, like ragged rims of foam;
A thousand windows front the rising sun,
Deep-set between the columns, many paned,
Tri-arched, emblazoned, gorgeously stained,
Crimson and purple, green and blue, and dun,
And all their wedded colors fall below,
Like rainbows shattered on a field of snow;
A bordering gallery runs along the roof,
Topt by a cupola, whose glittering spire
Pierces the brooding clouds, a glowing woof,
With golden spindles wove in Morning's loom of fire!
 

III

 
What fine and rare domains
Untold for leagues around;
Green parks, and meads, and plains,
And bosky woods profound,—
A realm of leafiness, and sweet enchanted ground!
Before the palace lies a shaven lawn,
Sloping and shining in the dews of dawn,
With turfy terraces, and garden bowers,
Where rows of slender urns are full of flowers;
Broad oaks o'erarch the winding avenues,
Edged round with evergreens of fadeless bloom,
And pour a thousand intermingling hues,
A many tinted flood of golden gloom;
Far-seen through twinkling leaves,
The fountains gush aloft like silver sheaves,
Drooping with shining ears, and crests of spray,
And foamy tassels blowing every way,
Shaking in marble basins white and cold,
A bright and drainless shower of beaded grain,
Which winnows off, in sun-illumined rain
The dusty chaff, a cloud of misty gold;
Around their volumes, down the plashy tide,
The swans are sailing mixed in lilies white,
Like virgin queens in soft disdain and pride,
Sweeping amid their maids with trains of light;
A little herd of deer with startled looks,
In shady parks where all the year they browse,
Head-down are drinking at the lucid brooks,
Their antlers mirrored with the tangled boughs;
My rivers flow beyond, with guardant ranks
Of silver-liveried poplars, on their banks;
Barges are fretting at the castle piers,
Rocking with every ripple in the tide;
And bridges span the stream with arches wide,
Their stony 'butments mossed and gray with years;
An undulating range of vales, and bowers,
And columned palaces, and distant towers,
And on the welkin mountains bar the view,
Shooting their jagged peaks sublimely up the blue!
 

IV

 
I saunter up the walks;
My sandals wetted through
With dripping flowers and stalks,
That line the avenue;
My broidered mantle all bedabbled with the dew!
I climb a flight of steps with regal pride,
And stroll along an echoing colonnade,
Sweeping against its pillared balustrade,
Adown a porch, and through a portal wide,
And I am in my Castle, Lord of all;
My faithful groom is standing in the hall
To doff my shining robe, while servitors,
And cringing chamberlains beside the doors
Waving their gilded wands, obsequious wait,
And bow me on my way in royal pomp and state!
 

V

 
My chamber lies apart,
The Castle's very heart,
And all things rich and rare,
From land, and sea, and air,
Are lavished with a wild and waste profusion there!
The carpeting was woven in Turkish looms,
From softest wool of fine Circassian sheep;
Tufted like springy moss in forests deep,
Illuminate with all its autumn blooms;
The antique chairs are made of cedar trees,
Veined with the rings of vanished cennturies
And touched with winter's frost, and summer's sun;
Sofas and couches, stuffed with cygnet's fleece,
Loll round inviting dreaminess and ease;
The gorgeous window curtains, damask red,
Suspended, silver-ringed, on bars of gold,
Droop heavily, in many a fluted fold,
And, rounding outward, intercept, and shed
The prisoned daylight o'er the slumbrous room,
In streams of rosy dimness, purple gloom;
Hard by are cabinets of curious shells,
Twisted and jointed, hornéd, wreathed, and curled,
And some like moons in rosy mist impearled,
With coral boughs from ocean's deepest cells;
Cases of rare medallions, coins antique,
Found in the dust of cities, Roman, Greek;
Etruscan urns, transparent, soft, and bright,
With fawns and dancing shepherds on their sides;
And costly marble vases dug from night
In Pompeii, beneath its lava tides:
Clusters of arms, the spoil of ancient wars;
Old scimitars of true Damascus brand,
Short swords with basket hilts to guard the hand,
And iron casques with rusty visor bars;
Lances, and spears, and battle axes keen,
With crescent edges, shields with studded thorns,
Yew bows, and shafts, and curvéd bugle horns,
With tasseled baldricks of the Lincoln green:
And on the walls with lifted curtains, see!
The portraits of my noble ancestry;
Thin featured, stately dames with powdered locks,
And courtly shepherdesses tending flocks;
Stiff lords in wigs, and ruffles white as snow,
Haught peers, and princes centuries ago,
And dark Sir Hugh, the bravest of the line,
With all the knightly scars he won in Palestine!
 

VI

 
My gallery sleeps aloof,
Soft-lighted through the roof,
Enshrining pictures old,
And groups of statues cold,
The gems of Art, when Art was in her Age of Gold!
Not picked from any single age or clime,
Nor one peculiar master, school, or tone;
Select of all, the best of all alone,
The spoil and largesse of the Earth and Time;
Food for all thoughts and fancies, grave or gay;
Suggestive of old lore, and poets' themes;
These filled with shapes of waking life, and day,
And those with spirits and the world of dreams;
Let me draw back the curtains, one by one,
And give their muffled brightness to the sun:
 

THE PICTURES

 
Helen and Paris on their bridal night,
Under the swinging cressets' starry light,
With Priam and his fifty sons around,
Feasting in all their majesty and bloom,
 
 
Filling their golden cups with eager hands,
To drink a health, while pale Cassandra stands
With all her raven tresses unbound,
Her soul o'ershadowed by the coming doom.
 
 
Andromache, with all her tearful charms,
Folded upon the mighty Hector's breast,
And the babe shrinking in its Nurse's arms,
Affrightened by the nodding of his crest.
 
 
The giant Cyclops, sitting in his cave,
Helped by the diving Ulysses, old and wise,
Spilling the wine in rivers down his beard,
Shaggy and grim,—his shoulder overleered
By swart Silenus, sly and cunning knave,
Who steals a puffy skin with twinkling eyes.
 
 
Anacreon, lolling in the myrtle shades,
Bibbing his Teian draughts with rich delight,
Pledging the dancing girls and Cyprian maids,
Pinching their little ears, and shoulders white.
 
 
A cloudless sunrise on the glittering Nile,
A bronzéd Sphinx, and temple on the shore,
And robéd priests that toss their censers while
Abased in dust, the populace adore;
 
 
A beakéd galley fretting at its curb,
With reedy oars, and masts, and silken sails,
And Cleopatra walks the deck superb,
Slow-followed by her court in spangled veils.
 
 
The Virgin Mother, and the Holy Child,
Holding a globe and sceptre, sweet and mild;
The Magi bring their gifts with reverent looks,
And the rapt Shepherds lean upon their crooks.
 
 
A summer fête, a party on a lawn;
Bowing gallants, with pluméd caps in hand,
And ladies with guitars, and, far withdrawn,
The rustic people dancing in a band.
 
 
A bleak defile, a pass in mountains deep,
Whose whitened summits wear their morning glow,
And dark banditti winding down the steep
Of shelvy rocks, pointing their guns below.
 
 
A harvest scene, a vineyard on the Rhine;
Arbors, and wreathéd pales, and laughing swains
Pouring their crowded baskets into wains,
And vats, and trodden presses gushing wine.
 
 
A Flemish Tavern: boors and burghers hale
Drawn round a table, o'er a board of chess,
Smoking their heavy pipes, and drinking ale,
Blowing from tankard brims the frothiness.
 
 
A picture of Cathay, a justice scene;
Pagodas, statues, and a group around;
And, in his sedan chair, the Mandarin,
Reading the scroll of laws to prisoners bound,
Bambooed with canes, and writhing on the ground;
And many more whose veils I will undraw
Some other day, exceeding fresh and fine;
And statues of the Grecian gods divine,
In all their various moods of love and awe:
The Phidean Jove, with calm creative face,
Like Heaven brooding o'er the deeps of Space;
Imperial Juno, Mercury, wingéd-heeled,
Lit with a message. Mars with helm and shield,
Apollo with the discus, bent to throw,
The piping Pan, and Dian with her bow,
And Cytherca just risen from the swell
Of crudded foam, half-stooping on her knee,
Wringing her dripping tresses in the sea
Whose loving billows climb the curvéd shell
Tumultuously, and o'er its edges flow,
And kiss with pallid lips her nakedness of snow!
 

VII

 
My boots may lie and mould,
However rare and old;
I cannot read to-day,
Away! with books, away!
Full-fed with sweets of sense,
I sink upon my couch in honied indolence!
Here are rich salvers full of nectarines,
Dead-ripe pomegranates, sweet Arabian dates,
Peaches and plums, and clusters fresh from vines,
And all imaginable sweets, and cakes,
And here are drinking-cups, and long-necked flasks
In wicker mail, and bottles broached from casks,
In cellars delvéd deep, and winter cold,
Select, superlative, and centuries old.
What more can I desire? what book can be
As rich as Idleness and Luxury?
What lore can fill my heart with joy divine,
Like luscious fruitage, and enchanted wine?
Brimming with Helicon I dash the cup;
Why should I waste my years in hoarding up
The thoughts of eld? Let dust to dust return:
No more for me,—my heart is not an urn!
I will no longer sip from little flasks,
Covered with damp and mould, when Nature yields,
And Earth is full of purple vintage fields;
Nor peer at Beauty dimmed with mortal masks,
When I at will may have them all withdrawn,
And freely gaze in her transfigured face;
Nor limp in fetters in a weary race,
When I may fly unbound, like Mercury's fawn;
No more contented with the sweets of old,
Albeit embalmed in nectar, since the trees,
The Eden bowers, the rich Hesperides,
Droop all around my path, with living fruits of gold!
 

VIII

 
Oh what a life is mine,
A life of joy and mirth,
The sensuous life of Earth,
Forever fresh and fine.
A heavenly worldliness, mortality divine!
When eastern skies, the sea, and misty plain,
Illumined slowly, doff their nightly shrouds,
And Heaven's bright archer Morn begins to rain
His golden arrows through the banded clouds,
I rise and tramp away the jocund hours,
Knee-deep in dewy grass, and beds of flowers;
I race my eager greyhound on the hills,
And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps,
Peak-lifted, gazing down the cloven deeps,
Where mighty rivers shrink to threaded rills;
The ramparts of the mountains loom around,
Like splintery fragments of a ruined world;
The cliff-bound dashing cataracts, downward hurled
In thunderous volumes, shake the chasms profound:
The imperial eagle, with a dauntless eye
Wheels round the sun, the monarch of the sky;
I pluck his eyrie in the blasted wood
Of ragged pines, and when the vulture screams,
I track his flight along the solitude,
Like some dark spirit in the world of dreams!
When Noon in golden armor, travel spent,
Climbing the azure plains of Heaven, alone,
Pitches upon its topmost steep his tent,
And looks o'er Nature from his burning throne,
I loose my little shallop from its quay,
And down the winding rivers slowly float,
And steer in many a shady cove and bay,
Where birds are warbling with melodious note;
I listen to the humming of the bees,
The water's flow, the winds, the wavy trees,
And take my lute and touch its silver chords,
And set the Summer's melody to words;
Sometimes I rove beside the lonely shore,
Margined and flanked by slanting shelvy ledges,
And caverns echoing Ocean's sullen roar;
Threading the bladdery weeds, and paven shells,
Beyond the line of foam, the jewelled chain,
The largesse of the ever giving main.
Tossed at the feet of Earth with surgy swells,
I plunge into the waves, and strike away,
Breasting with vigorous strokes the snowy spray;
Sometimes I lounge in arbors hung with vines,
The which I sip, and sip, with pleasure mute,
O'er mouthful bites of golden-rinded fruit;
When evening comes, I lie in dreamy rest,
Where lifted casements front the glowing west,
And watch the clouds, like banners wide unfurled,
Hung o'er the flaming threshold of the world:
Its mission done, the holy Day recedes,
Borne Heavenward in its car, with fiery steeds,
Leaving behind a lingering flush of light,
Its mantle fallen at the feet of Night;
The flocks are penned, the earth is growing dim;
The moon comes rounding up the welkin's rim,
Glowing through thinnest mist, an argent shell,
Washed up the sky from Night's profoundest cell;
One after one the stars begin to shine
In drifted beds, like pearls through shallow brine;
And lo! through clouds that part before the chase
Of silent winds—a belt of milky white,
The Galaxy, a crested surge of light,
A reef of worlds along the sea of Space:
I hear my sweet musicians far withdrawn,
Below my wreathéd lattice, on the lawn,
With harp, and lute, and lyre,
And passionate voices full of tears and fire;
And envious nightingales with rich disdain
Filling the pauses of the languid strain;
My soul is tranced and bound,
Drifting along the magic sea of sound,
Driving in a barque of bliss from deep to deep,
And piloted at last into the ports of Sleep!
 

IX

 
Nor only this, though this
Might seal a life of bliss,
But something more divine,
For which I once did pine,
The crown of worlds above,
The heart of every heart, the Soul of Being—Love!
I bow obedient to my Lady's sway,
The sovereignty that won my soul of yore,
And linger in her presence night and day,
And feel a heaven around her evermore;
I sit beside her couch in chambers lone,
And soft unbraid, and lay her locks apart,
And take her taper fingers in my own,
And press them to my lips with leaps of heart;
Sometimes I kneel to her with cups of wine,
With pleading eyes, beseeching her to taste,
With long-delaying lips, the draught divine;
And when she sips thereof, I clasp her waist,
And kiss her mouth, and shake her hanging curls,
And in her coy despite unloose her zone of pearls!
I live for Love, for Love alone, and who
Dare chide me for it? who dare call it folly?
It is a holy thing, if aught is holy,
And true indeed, if Truth herself is true:
Earth cleaves to earth, its sensuous life is dear,
Mortals should love mortality while here,
And seize the glowing hours before they fly:
Bright eyes should answer eyes, warm lips should meet,
And hearts enlocked to kindred hearts should beat,
And every soul that lives, in love should live and die!
 

X

 
My dear and gentle wife,
The Angel of my life,
Oppressed with sweetest things,
Has folded up her wings,
And lies in slumber deep,
Like some divinest Dream upon the couch of Sleep!
 
 
Nor sound, nor stir profanes the stilly room,
Haunted by Sleep and Silence, linkéd pair;
The very light itself muffled in gloom,
Steals in, and melts the enamored air
Where Love doth brood and dream, while Passion dies,
Breathing his soul out in a mist of sighs!
Lo! where she lies behind the curtains white,
Pillowed on clouds of down,—her golden hair
Braided around her forehead smooth and fair,
Like a celestial diadem of light:—
Her soft voluptuous lips are drawn apart,
Curving in fine repose, and maiden pride;
Her creamy breast,—its mantle brushed aside
Swells with the long pulsation of her heart:
One languid arm rests on the coverlid,
And one beneath the crumpled sheet is hid,
(Ah happy sheets! to hide an arm so sweet!)
Nor all concealed amid their folds of snow,
The soft perfection of her shape below,
Rounded and tapering to her little feet!
Oh Love! if Beauty ever left her sphere,
And sovereign sisters, Art and Poesy,
Moulded in loveliness she slumbers here,
Slumbers, dear love, in thee!
It is thy smile that makes the chamber still;
It is thy breath that fills the scented air;
The light around is borrowed from thy hair,
And all things else are subject to thy will,
And I am so bewildered in this deep
Ambrosial calm, and passionate atmosphere,
I know not whether I am dreaming here,
Or in the world of Sleep!
 

XI

 
My eyes are full of tears,
My heart is full of pain,
To wake, as now, again,
And walk, as in my youth, the wilderness of Years!
No more! no more! the autumn winds are loud
In stormy passes, howling to the Night:
Behind a cloud the moon doth veil her light,
And the rain pours from out the hornéd cloud.
And hark! the solemn and mysterious bell,
Swinging its brazen echoes o'er the wave:
Not mortal hands, but spirits ring the knell,
And toll the parting ghost of Midnight to its grave.
 

TO A BEREAVED MOTHER

BY HERMANN

 
Its smile and happy laugh are lost to thee,
Earth must his mother and his pillow be.
 

W. G. Clark.

 
Mother, now thy task is done,
Now thy vigil ended;
With the coming of the sun,
Grief and joy are blended.
 
 
Grief that thus thy flower of love
From its stem is riven;
Joy that will bloom above,
Midst the bowers of Heaven.
 
 
Gone, as oft expires the light
Of thy nightly taper:
Gone, as 'fore the sunshine bright,
Early morning's vapor.
 
 
Kiss its lips so mute and cold,
Cold as chiselled marble,
They will now to harp of gold
Glad Hosannas warble.
 
 
At the last they sweetly smiled,
Told it not for gladness;
Would'st thou now recall thy child
To a world of sadness?
 
 
It is hard to gather up,
Ties so rudely riven;
But thou'lt find this bitter cup
For thy weal was given.
 
 
Kiss again its hands so white,
Kiss its marble forehead;
Soon the grave will hide from sight,
That thou only borrowed.
 
 
Thou will meet thy child again,
Where no death or sorrow
Bring their sad to-day of pain,
And their dread to-morrow.
 

THE AMBITIOUS BROOKLET

BY A. OAKEY HALL

CHAPTER I

How the Brooklet was born; and lodged; and wandered off one rainy day.

There was once a Brooklet born of a modest spring that circled through a smiling meadow. All the hours of the Spring, and the Summer, and the Autumn, kept she her musical round; greeting the sun at his rising, together with the meadow-larks which came to dip their beaks in the sparkling water-drops; and singing to the moon and stars all night, as she bore their features within her bosom, in grateful remembrance of their beauty. The laborer in the field hard by often came to visit her, and wet his honest, toil-browned brow with her cooling drops; and often, too, the laborer's daughter came at sunset time to sit by a mossy stone, with so lovely a face that the Brooklet, as she mirrored the features of the beautiful visitor, leaped about the pebbles with ripplings of admiration.

And so this Brooklet lived on, only ceasing her merry flow and circling journey when the bushes by her side became white with snow, and when the rabbits from the brushwood fence at her head came out to stand upon the slippery casing that the Brooklet often saw spreading over her, and shutting out the warm sunshine by day, and at nightfall blurring the radiance of moon and stars.

One stormy spring day the Brooklet seemed to rise higher among the twigs of the alder-bushes than ever before; the rain came down faster and heavier, and beat into her bosom, until her tiny waves were rough and sore with pain, and she was fain to nestle closer to the sedgy grass that now bent lowly to the pebbles at the roots. Growing higher every minute was the Brooklet; and frightened somewhat, and longing for the sunlight, or the laborer, and for the lovely daughter's face to cheer her up, she looked off over a track of country wider and greener than she had ever seen before. And so the Brooklet, all frightened as she was, said to herself, "I'll run along a bit into this country spot, so wide and green, and maybe I shall find the sunlight and the lovely face."

Faster came the rain; and so the Brooklet, leaping wildly over a rock whose top until then her eyes had never seen, went flowing on upon this country spot, so wide and green. The new sights coming in view at every bound quite made the Brooklet forget her terrors from the beating rain; she was pained no longer by the heavy drops, but soothed herself among the velvet grass; and turned between little flowers scarcely above the ground, and which, as she passed them, seemed to be as frightened by the wind and rain as herself had been before the meadow was left behind.

The Brooklet had thus run on until she saw the country spot so wide and green was well passed over, and trees and bushes, darker and thicker than she had ever known before, were close at hand. And while she thought of stopping in her way and going back, she heard not far before an echo of a sound most like unto her own; and so kept on to find it out. Clearer and louder increased the sound, as now through mouldy leaves and dark thickets, and under decayed logs and insect-burrowed moss, she kept a course, until presently, over a fallen tree, she saw a Brooklet, larger, wider, and evidently much older than herself, which, on her near approach, ran by the fallen tree's side, and said, "Good morning, sister: what is so delicate a being, as you seem to be, doing in this dark forest?"

The wanderer Brooklet became silent with wonder. She had never been addressed before, though often trying to talk with the laborer, and to the lovely face of her meadow acquaintance, without the slightest notice upon their part of the overtures.

"Good morning, sister, I say," was repeated over the fallen tree. "Where are you going at so slow a pace? Come over, and let us talk a bit."

"I cannot, for I am terribly frightened, and I've lost my way. I want to quit this dark place, and go where I can hear the lark again, and see the pretty face which used to look at mine when I was circling in yonder meadow, now, I fear, far, far behind."

"Larks and pretty faces, indeed! Why what a spooney sister, you are, to be sure. I'll show you more birds than ever you heard sing before, and prettier faces than ever you saw before."

"No, no, I must go back," replied the wanderer; "I have come too far already, and see, the rain has almost ceased."

"More's the pity for that," returned the other; "the faster it rains the faster I go, and that is what I want. I have left my family brooks a long time since, and I'm going on my travels to be somebody. I'm tired of my lonesome life among the meadows. I'm the ambitious Brooklet. Come over, then, and go along; we'll travel the faster in company."

"I'm not ambitious; and as you may see, I cannot come."

"You're almost to the log top now. I'll kiss you soon," triumphed the ambitious Brooklet, circling gayly round a tuft of green.

It must have been the terrible rain, or the fright of her dark journeying place, that had taken her strength away:—the wandering Brooklet felt that it must be: for now her strength of will was almost gone. Nearer the log top came in view, until with a bound she swept its polished surface, and with a dash came over upon the ambitious Brooklet.

"Good! that's the way to do it; now we shall journey gayly on," said the latter, "I have lost much time in stopping here, and there are such rare sights ahead!"

The wanderer felt the oddest sensations she had ever known, and said, "Sister—ambitious sister—how much warmer than I are you!"

"Oh, you are young, I suppose—fresh from the icy spring. But journey on more southward yet, away from these dark trees, and you'll be warmer yet; come, I say."

"I like your feel; but then I shall be lost, I know I shall; and so I'll stay behind."

"You cannot; for, ambitious as I am, I want your help. See how much faster we travel together when your strength is joined to mine; and I'm the strongest, and you can't go back."

The wandering Brooklet looked fearfully around, and saw indeed that the log she had leaped was now fast fading away, and felt that her strength became less and less as the ambitious Brooklet clung closer to her side.

Presently they came in sight of a ledge of rocks. "Oh, this is rare indeed!" said the stronger sister Brooklet, "Let us pause a bit for breath, and then for a merry leap adown the valley of pines you see before."

The Brooklets stopped, and became stronger, and leaped over the rocks; the one with an exulting bound—the other carried tremblingly along.

The leap was a long one, and a hard one; for there were craggy rocks beneath, which they had not seen. And the ambitious Brooklet cried sharply and loudly—foaming in her rage as she went between the stony points, and quite forgetting her weaker sister in her pain. The latter was sorely injured too, and cut into little foam-bits; but she kept her wits about her, looking around everywhere for a place to rest. Soon she espied one—a little bowl of marshy ground, hemmed in by rocks, into which a straggling dropping from the chasm above slowly came.

"Here will I go and rest," she said. So waiting for the ambitious Brooklet to get far out of sight, she collected all her strength for a jump into the bowl, where the drops came sparkling in. There was no need for fear of the sister on before; her she heard going over rock after rock, crying and wailing in her craggy journey. Then the tired wanderer, with a violent effort of her exhausted strength, jumped a rock and fell panting into the marshy bowl.