MINE are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.
I hide in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.
No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;
And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.
And many a thousand summers
My apples ripen'd well;
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.
I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,—
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew;
And out of spent and agèd things
I form'd the world anew;
What time the gods kept carnival,
Trick'd out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.
Time and Thought were my surveyors,-
They laid their courses well,
They boil'd the sea, and baked the layers
Of granite, marl, and shell.
But he, the man-child glorious,-
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.
My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.
Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest?
Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;
I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is play'd;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade?
I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate.
Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretch'd my hand, Made one of day, and one of night, And one of the salt sea-sand.
One in a Judæan manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.
I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule ;-
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.
Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.
No ray is dimm'd, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.
IF the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanish'd gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred seven ;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
A RUDDY drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,-
And, after many a year,
Glow'd unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
O friend! my bosom said,-
Through thee alone the sky is arch'd,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.
OH fair and stately maid, whose eyes
Were kindled in the upper skies
At the same torch that lighted mine;
For so I must interpret still
Thy sweet dominion o'er my will,
A sympathy divine.
Ah, let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem at heart my own;
Nor fear those watchful sentinels,
Who charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids,
With fire that draws while it repels.
Born in New York City 1806.
THOU Vocal sprite! thou feather'd troubadour !
In pilgrim weeds through many a clime a ranger,
Comest thou to doff thy russet suit once more,
And play in foppish trim the masquing stranger?
Philosophers may teach thy whereabouts and nature;
But, wise as all of us, perforce, must think 'em,
The schoolboy best hath fix'd thy nomenclature,
And poets too must call thee Bob O' Linkum !
Say! art thou, long 'mid forest glooms benighted,
So glad to skim our laughing meadows over,
With our gay orchards here so much delighted,
It makes thee musical, thou airy rover?
Or are those buoyant notes the pilfer'd treasure
Of fairy isles, which thou hast learn'd to ravish
Of all their sweetest minstrelsy at pleasure,
And, Ariel-like, again on men to lavish?
They tell sad stories of thy mad-cap freaks;
Wherever o'er the land thy pathway ranges,
And even in a brace of wandering weeks,
They say, alike thy song and plumage changes:
Here both are gay; and when the buds put forth,
And leafy June is shading rock and river,
Thou art unmatch'd, blithe warbler of the north !
When through the balmy air thy clear notes quiver.
Joyous, yet tender, was that gush of song
Caught from the brooks, where, 'mid its wildflowers smiling,
The silent prairie listens all day long,
The only captive to such sweet beguiling;
Or didst thou, flitting through the verdurous halls
And column'd aisles of western groves symphonious,
Learn from the tuneful woods rare madrigals,
To make our flowering pastures here harmonious?
|