Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar, "There thou 'lt find the humble postern Slept again the aspen silence, Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade, flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert Fell like cool rain on the sand. Forward leaped she o'er the threshold, Fell from her the body's scurf; 'Neath the palm next day some Arabs Found a corpse upon the turf. THE BIRCH-TREE. RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine, Among thy leaves that palpitate for ever; Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so full of trembly confi. dences: I sat and mused; the fire burned low, The heads of ancient wise men) Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew As rosy as excisemen. My antique high-backed Spanish chair It came out in that famous bark For, as that saved of bird and beast Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats: Of ice the northern voyager meets I offer to all bores this perch, eyes See golden ages rising, Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys Thou 'rt fond of crystallizing! My wonder, then, was not unmixed I saw its trembling arms enclose Now even such men as Nature forms They understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces, Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! "We had some toughness in our grain, "He had stiff knees, the Puritan, He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten. "These loud ancestral boasts of yours, Such stalwart men as these are." "Good sir," I said, "you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises - " "Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone, That you, your conscience blinding, Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, When slavery feels like grinding. 'Tis shame to see such painted sticks In Vane's and Winthrop's places, To see your spirit of Seventy-six Drag humbly in the traces, "We forefathers to such a rout! - Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The hem of thy white vesture. The streaks of first forewarning, I hear great steps, that through the shade I looked, no form mine eyes could find, A dismal tune was blowing; ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON. Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man ; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; 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 offered wealth with unrewarded eye. Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer cliine; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment In the white lily's breezy tent, first YE who, passing graves by night, See ye not that woman pale? |