Classic Poem

My grandsire, when he built the place,
Sir Hugh, (you may behold him there,
With ruffles, cue, and powdered hair,
And proper blandness on his face,)
Was Tory, and his loyal soul
No rebel dream could e'er beguile:
He would have had the land in whole,
Colossal, touching either pole,
A likeness of his native isle!
Hence the Elizabethan gables,
The lawns, the elms, the antique stables,
And all this lumber called virtu ,
This old time frowning down the new.

But, ere I tell you more of him,
Or point the objects strange and quaint,
I pray you note these figures dim,
Half hid in dust and cracking paint.
That picture of those little ones,
Which represent Alcmena's sons,
Young Hercules and his weaker brother, —
One with the snake in his baby hands,
Crushing it as in iron bands,
While in affright recoils the other, —
Are portraits which the Berkley mother,
In all the wealth of parental joys,
Had painted of her two fair boys;
And pictured thus, because she knew
There was that difference 'twixt the two.
The child who holds the writhing snake
Was Ralph: the one who seems to quake
And shudder back, — that was Sir Hugh.

They grew, and oft the quarrel loud
Raged 'twixt them when they were together.
Sir Hugh was sullen, wintry, proud,
The other fierce as mad March weather, —
A swift, cloud-blowing, whirling day,
That o'er all obstacles makes way,
Whether in wrath or whether in play,
Striding on to the stormy end,
Breaking what will not bow or bend.
The soul which lights that face of paint,
You well discern, would scorn restraint;
And when he grew a stripling tall,
Knowing himself the younger brother,
And feeling the coldness of the other,
The place for him proved far too small:
So, staying not for leave to ask,
Our Hercules went to seek his task;
And, lest his family might reclaim
Their truant, took another name,
Joining the army. Tradition tells
He did some daring miracles.
'Twas said he fell in a midnight trench
At Fort du Quesne, against the French.
Sir Hugh was then the only son
To hand the name of Berkley on.

His lady — she who bears a crook,
And shepherds at her careful side
A lamb, while from her eyes a look
Of mildness chastens half her pride —
Gave to the house one child, and died.

That child a maiden grown you see,
With laughing eyes and tresses free,
Which wellnigh mocked the painter's skill:
It glows as if some morning beam
Had poured here in a golden stream,
And, when the sun passed, lingered still.

A year or two went by, and then
His heart was vacant as his hall.
No pleasure answered to his call,
No joy was in the world of men:
One passion only swayed his mind,
And thrust all other thoughts aside, —
The passion of ancestral pride.
The blindest of all eyes most blind
Are those forever turned behind.
Sheer to the past he held his face,
Like some mad boatman on a river,
With eyes still on some long-gone place,
Until he feels the shock and shiver
Which tells him he is gone forever.

The empty hall, or vacant heart,
When a new-comer passes in,
Throwing the dusty doors apart,
Sounds and re-echoes with a din
Which makes the ghostly shadows start
And fly into the dusk remote:
The webs about the casements float,
And flutter on the sudden gust;
The sun pours in its golden dust;
The phantom Silence dies in air,
And rapidly from hall to hall,
With questioning eyes and backward hair,
Wild Wonder speeds, and mounts the stair,
Chasing the echoes' far footfall.

Thus into Berkley's hall and heart,
Led by his fancy's sudden whim.
Passed a new bride, — a face to dart
Strange lustre through the twilight dim, —
A soul that even startled him,
Until he half forgot his pride:
Else had he never stooped to embower
Beneath his ancient roof the flower
To common wildwood vines allied.

Thus oft the passion most profound,
Which triumphed over all the past,
With unexpected halt, wheels round,
And contradicts itself at last.

He took her from a rival's breast.
The hot youth dared him to the test.
Alas! he fell on Berkley's steel;
And, it is said, through woe or weal
She ever loved the rival best.

Her heart was like a crystal spring,
Fluttered by every breezy wing:
Was there a cloud? a darker shade
Was in its deep recesses laid;
Was there a sun? the pool, o'errun
With glory, seemed to mock the sun.
Her black hair, oft with violets twined,
(Her heart was with the wildest flowers,)
Tossed back at random, wooed the wind,
That chased her through the forest bowers.
The woodman felt his hand relax
A moment on the lifted axe.
As through the vistas of the trees
He saw her glide, a spirit blithe;
Or, when she tript the harvest leas,
The singing mower stayed his scythe,
Watched where she fled, then took his way,
And, mowing, sang no more that day.

With no misgiving thought or doubt.
Her fond arms clasped his child about.
In the full mantle of her love;
For whoso loves the darling flowers
Must love the bloom of human bowers, —
The types of brightest things above.
One day — one happy summer-day —
She prest it to her tender breast:
The sunshine of its head there lay
As pillowed in its native rest, —
A blissful picture of repose,
A lily bosomed on a rose:
The smallest lily of the vale
Making the rose's sweet breast pale.

One only day, — and then the sire,
Still to his former spirit true,
Lest the young bud should take the hue
Of that which glowed too fondly by her, —
Of that sweet wildling, nature's own, —
And thereby learn the look and tone
Of spirits alien unto pride,
Conveyed her to the river's side. —
For months his household felt eclipse, —
And one of his own many ships
Bore her across the ocean wide;
And soon in her ancestral isle
Was shed the sunshine of her smile.
Ere half the summer passed away,
The lady Berkley grew less gay,
And, like a captured forest-fawn,
She seemed to mourn some freedom gone, —
Mourned for her native mountain-wild,
From which her feet had been beguiled.

Her cheeks grew pale, and dim her eye,
Her voice was low, her mirth was stayed.
Upon her heart there seemed to lie
The darkness of a nameless shade;
She paced the house from room to room.
Her form became a walking gloom.

The menials, in their fancy wise,
Glared at each other with strange leers:
And, when she met her husband's eyes,
Her sad soul burst to instant tears.
He wondered with a cold surmise,
And questioned with as heartless words:
And could it be a woodland flower
Would pine within such stately bower?
Or, favored o'er all forest birds,
Could this one droop with strange desires
Within a cage of golden wires?

Have you beheld a mountain-brook
Turned to some cultured garden-nook, —
How it grows stagnant in the pool,
Like some wild urchin in a school
That saddens o'er a hateful book?
Thus grew the lady, and her look
Became at last as one insane:
The cloud that long o'ercast her brain
Still whirled with gusty falls of rain,
Which drowned her heart and dimmed her eyes,
As when the dull autumnal skies
Long blur the dreary window-pane.

One morn, strange wonder filled the place,
And fruitless searching filled the day;
The stream, the woodland, gave no trace:
They only knew she passed away, —
Passed like a vision in the air,
With naught to tell of how or where.

Tradition adds how, night by night,
With hanging hair and robes of white,
With pallid hands together prest
In pain upon her aching breast,
Her spirit walked from room to room,
As if in search of something lost;

That even Berkley shunned the gloom,
Fearing to meet that breathless ghost;
For some averred her form had been
Afloat upon the river seen;
While some, with stouter words, replied.
The maniac lady wandered wide
Upon her native mountain-side.