Classic Poem

Mine ancient, cynical, bachelor friend,
I know you sneer at this, my song,
At school-time loves, that only belong
To “children,” a thing you don't comprehend;
And yet I know you've a great large heart,
In common parlance, a very “barn!”
I warn you, (bards have the right to warn,)
Your crops are all garnered, and every part
Is crowded with sultry sheaves of the past,
And you have gathered your best and last.
November is on you; just bend down your ear
Above the red “barn,” and hear what you'll hear.
'Tis the throb of life's tide, you will say, on the shore;
Nay, the thump of the flail on your heart's dusty floor.

Can you not remember in days long gone,
When you were a school-boy, and knew not men,
A beautiful face that upon you shone,
As never a face has shone since then?
How, like a highwayman, you laid in wait,
To steal one glance, or to catch one word!
How your heart, like a lark, went singing elate,
If you caught but a smile or a syllable heard?
So sweet was her speech in its delicate closes,
You thought she was made of music and roses!

So, I pray you, hold off,—if you cannot, in others,
Relive what you've lost in the May that has flown:
Who enjoys not their pleasures, he murderously smothers
A thousand delights that might still be his own.
So tend to your barn, and its sheaves, and its flail,
And let the muse freely keep on with her tale.

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie,
The years are reeling through space, you know,
Three times you have seen the lilacs blow,
Since that sweet brooklet revelry.
Eighteen and fifteen, are beautiful ages,
The loveliest figures on Life's young pages;
But the volume holds threescore, or so,
And every twelvemonth a leaf must be turned,
And its mystical lesson sincerely learned.
The round years roll; they are worlds in themselves,
And spin on their axis, every one,
And eternity is their central sun,
While we, poor, miserable, helpless elves,
Must whirl with their whirling night and day,
Till our eyes are dim, and our hair is blown gray.

Oh, my beloved and beautiful two,
You know not what is in store for you;
It never troubles your innocent wits;
You only see what is bright and new,
And glorify all with your heart's own dew;
From flower to flower your butterfly flits,
Your great bee drops
On the clover tops,
And drinks at his leisure the honey dew.

Tis a breathless day; the laden grove
Is dreaming its summer dream of love:
A murmurous whisper, like a school,
Is stealing along through its shadows cool;
And you thoughtfully wonder, so still is the air,
What it is that's astir in the tree-tops there.
I have a belief, and no reasoning clod,
With his facts driven in and clenched with a nod,
Shall argue me out of my poet faith—
My heart holds fast to what Nature saith.
I inherit some of that ancient creed,
From which the world has long been freed,—
Freed, and made better; but, in felling the tree
Of Error, such accident well might be;
They may have crushed some flowers of truth,
The fairest that blest the world in its youth.
I believe that every created thing
Hath a soul which was born in Eternity's spring,
Which still will live on to Eternity's close,
Though the world end in fire, as prophecy shows;
So these great forest souls, holding council together,
May converse as they please in the calmest of weather.

In low, mellow tones they are breathing to-day,—
I wish I could know what these woodland bards say;
But I'm sure they are talking of him and of her,
Whose feet 'mid the leaves make a musical stir,
Where they go hand in hand, with singing and laughter,
The red thrush before, and the gray squirrel after.

Through paths where the whortleberries grow,
And where the woodland blossoms blow,
They find the honeysuckle fruit
Delicious, and only grown to suit
The delicate taste of a maid like ours,
Whose whole sweet life seems formed of flowers.
Where the odorous mandrake lies around,
Dragging the thin stalk to the ground,
Not to be touched till a golden-yellow
Proclaims them mature, and pulpy, and mellow.
They pass, till they gain a May-time knoll,
Only wanting the flowery pole.
Here the vine, in ambitious reach,
Climbs to the top of the oak and beech,
O'erflowing the trees, as fountains their urns,
Till the gazer scarce their support discerns,
And drops its cordage, in many a loop,
Like ropes on the summer deck of a sloop.

Between the trees one great vine clings,
The very completest of woodland swings,
And into the swing my Rosalie
Is lifted, and seated, and there swings she,
Pouring her full heart's rapturous glee;
While Ralph, with his soul brimming o'er with devotion,
Keeps the vine with its beautiful freight in full motion,
Till, seizing the swing, he runs daringly under,
And impels her so high, that in fear and in wonder,
Her breathing is stayed, while her delicate tresses
Are smoothed forth and back by the soft winds caresses.

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie,
The clusters are thick on life's young bough,
And they, on the red autumnal tree,
May ripen to purple and gold, and be
All that they promise the future now;
But oftentimes o'er the full vine blows
A poisonous breath, and no one knows
From whence it comes or whither it goes;
But the fairest clusters that crown the vine,
Are suddenly seen to wither and pine;
Or the grape to its central seed is cleft,
Like a broken heart by hope bereft.

But, never let thoughts like these arise,
Dear flower, to dim your violet eyes;
Let sadness come in its own time brought;
Let unfound sorrow still lie unsought.
Then swing and sing, sweet maiden mine,
A bluebird on a summer vine;
An embodied April, May, and June,
Overflowing with spring-time tune;
A soul of blooms, where the song of birds
Finds sweet translation in musical words.

But, hark! a shudder runs through the air,
As if, within his desert lair,
Some lion, shaking the sleep from his mane,
Proclaimed himself lord of the boundless plain,
With savage growl, and hungry grumble;
But as it nears 'tis the rattle and rumble
Of a chariot making its way toward Rome,
Bearing victorious Cæsar home.
But see! to the harnessed winds is given
The tempest car, with its fiery leaven,
And these are the thunder-wheels of Heaven,
Over the distant hilltops driven;
Already the tremulous heads of the trees
Are bowing before the courier breeze,
But the insolent outriders soon rush past,
Whirling and snapping the whips of the blast,
Lashing and cutting the boughs, till the air
Is alive with the foliage that flies in despair;
And suddenly frighting the harvesting world,
The roaring cloud o'er the sun is hurled,
With the speed of a death-laden warrior-bark,
While the red lightnings flash from its ports through the dark.

Near by there is a shelter of rocks,
Where a shepherdess might watch her flocks,
Secure as well from shower and sun,
With mosses and wild vines overrun.

Scenting the rain ere the big drops splash,
Listening to the rending crash,
And blinded by the sulphurous flash,
To this woodland cloister the lovers withdraw,
With a mingled sense of pleasure and awe;
But not too soon, for a bolt of fire,
By the storm-king sped, in reckless ire,
From his red right hand in a blazing line,
Shivers the oak with its loaded vine;
And they see when the stun of the blow is past,
The tree and the swing,
Each a splintered thing,
Over the knoll in confusion cast.

Now and then they hear the sound
Of large drops on their sentinel round,
For the main great army of the rain,
Has followed the stream up the distant plain,
To entrench its full force in the strength of the hills,
The better to raid on the valleys and mills:
And that splashy tread is of picket or scout,
Which the storm, on his flank, has thrown warily out.

The skirmishers now have passed from view;
Come, stroll to the headland, my beautiful two;
What is the walk of a mile to you?
And see how the wind has worried the bay,
Till it flung its insult of flashing spray
Into the face of the blast,
Half blinding it with brine as it passed.
You are not one to be afraid,
So fear not for your feet, sweet maid;
Only a little spot of wet
Lies here and there like a violet.

Along the path, under barberry bushes,
And where your hand the low bough pushes
Aside, perchance your golden curl
May catch in its snare a random pearl,
And the branch, if your touch be somewhat reckless,
Rebounding, may fling you a delicate necklace.
But this is all: to the headland hie,
And watch the ships and the storm go by.

They are out on their way, through bush and through bramble,
Where the rabbits all year in security gambol;
There, the snowy skirt of my Rosalie's dress
Is caught in the barbarous vines caress,
Like Innocence, by the world beset,
Till it struggles out of the briery net;
But the fingers of Ralph will dexterous be,
In freeing her pathway: and what cares he
If the thorns do wound him? he laughs at the pain,
And brushes away the crimsor stain;
For his hand, though no complaint is said,
Like a tiger-lily, is speckled with red.
But out of the thicket they laughing emerge,
And stand at last on the ocean's verge.

The rebel storm is subdued and bowed,
And the seven-hued banner is hung on the cloud,
And the air is flooded with purple and gold,
Out of the royal sun's tent rolled.
From billows that round the dark rocks whirl,
Is thrown their spray of amber and pearl;
The dashing brine, and the new-mown hay,
Send mingled odors around the bay.
The flowers on shore, and the breakers white bloom,
Have each their own beauty of hue and perfume.
The hidden thrush fills the air with delight,
While the grace of the seabird is flashed on the sight.
In midst of the waves, like a swinging gull,
To the billows a plaything, the fisherman's hull
Is lifted and dropt o'er the watery realm;
But the hand of the master is firm at the helm,
While the larger bark speeds through the foam of the main,
Like a cantering steed o'er a flowery plain.

See yon great dusky steamer; it comes from the isles
Where the seabirds of Commerce, in cormorant flocks,
Sail in and sail out round the fog-mantled rocks,
Where the cloud seldom lifts, and the sun seldom smiles.
On its briny deck perchance is borne
Great news, that by to-morrow's morn
May wake our land, and let it know,
That family blood, though it may flow,
Thousands of miles away o'er the main,
Is not perforce our natural foe,
Taking delight in its kindred's pain;
Or it may tell of the hungry growl
Of the jealous sea-lion; well, let him howl.
The bird that sits on our cliffs by the sea,
Is as wakeful and watchful a guardian as he;
The time will come, when, through natural laws,
The teeth will be lost from his leonine jaws;
Then the king in his lair,
In the depth of his dotage, as well as despair,
With his head dropped over his powerless paws,
Will feel the hoof, and hear the bray
Of the smallest power he awes to-day.

In that hour, forgetting injustice uncivil,
His menacing stand, and his great exultation,
When destruction was waving her torch o'er our nation;
Then we, ere he sinks to his ruinous level,
Ere his great mart becomes the sacked Rome of the sea,
An embryo Nineveh yet to be,
In magnanimous might may return good for evil,
And drive the foul robbers, who now are his slaves,
From the island made dear by our ancestors' graves.

Here, in the bay, lies a Union ship,
Which the billow scarce causes to rise or to dip,
So grandly she looms, lying under the fort,
And so heavy the war-dog that snarls at each port.
A thousand defenders like this, huge and grim,
On the watery highway in triumph shall swim,
'Twixt opposite poles, e'en from ice unto ice,
And the world will take heed of their iron advice;
And a continent yet, of Columbia's sons,
Shall delight in the voice of those Union guns.

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie,
We are not talking of love you see.
In the hour of ruder things,
Sometimes Love must draw apart
Into some recess of the heart,
And fold himself in his own bright wings,
Lest, by a sudden whirl and gust
In the highway of life the clinging dust
Might soil those pinions celestial hue,
Which tarnished, no power on earth can renew.
But I hear my trusting young Rosalie say,
With a shake of her curls, her protest sweet,
She believes that Love, in the roughest highway,
Would sanctify all with his delicate feet.
That the weariest road where his wings unfold,
Is suddenly paved with amber and gold;
And thickly strewn through the sultriest hours
With roses, and cooled with the dew of flowers!
A beautiful faith, gentle priestess, in sooth,
To breathe at the garlanded altar of youth,
From which flows the crystaline fountain of Truth;
And you, standing so near,
May see and may hear
What the time-veiled sense of the eye and the ear
Of the world-weary pilgrim might fail to make clear.

On this bowery headland an altar stands,
Carved from the granite by invisible hands,
When the world was young,
And there the old loomsman, Time, has flung
A mantle across,
Made of the delicate many-hued moss,
And here, with the rainbow arching above,
Making a dome to their temple of Love;
With listening wild flowers, and with with witnessing sun,
While the sudden gush of the woodland throng,
Rises like a hymeneal song;
And along the rocks the swift waves run,
Like the hands of an organist, flashing free,
With inspiration, from key to key,
Sending jubilant melody up from the sea.

Here sitting, the hearts of my beautiful two,
Like long-watched flowers, that blossom at last,
A-flush with beauty, and bright with dew,
Swelling with all the dear growth of the past,
With a glory no time can destroy or conceal,
Bloom full in the light of each other's eyes!
Their two souls look their glad surprise,
And the depth of their deathless love reveal;
And wonder smiles in the face of each,
That what has been growing so long and well,
Should only this moment have broken the spell,
And found expression in tremulous speech.

Sweet words are said, and sweeter replies
Come on the breath of responsive sighs,
And melt through the tear, which the soft lash keeps,
That earliest drop which the full heart weeps;
Born of the ecstacy which it feels,
When Love at his first confessional kneels.
Oh, Love, let never foot more rude
Than yours on this sainted place intrude;
Let a hallowed glory forever shine
Around this consecrated shrine;
Breathe you a ban on the ambient air,
To admit no wing but the singers there;
And draw a circle around the spot,
That nothing less pure than the violet,
The sweet-briar, and the forget-me-not,
Shall near this sacred shrine be set;
Let naught unholy be seen or heard
At the altar where you have ministered.