Classic Poem

Days past; and now from Berkley Hall,
When evening sped her herald star,
Gay music, with wild rise and fall,
Streamed on the air; the windows all
Shot their red beams of splendor far,
Firing the dark like beacon-torches;
While, like a wedding-train, there flowed
Gay coaches up the winding road,
Grating the gravel near the porches.

Form after form, in rich attire
Of gems and rustling garments bright,
Swept like shadows out of the night
Into the sudden blaze of light,
Gleaming as in a robe of fire.

The peasant on the distant slope,
Agaze at joys beyond his hope,
Believing the world was what it seemed, —
Alas that others should be more wise! —
Beheld them glide, as he fondly deemed,
Into a transient paradise.
Along the casements he saw them pass,
As phantoms on the flaming glass;
And when the music awoke the dance,
Like shadows they seemed to sway and glance,
Or revellers seen in a dreamer's trance.

Fond soul, could some kind sprite have shown
Some hearts beneath those robes and gems,
The smile without, within the groan,
He had not sighed that, poor, unknown,
He stood apart in the open air,
Or bartered his peace with the proudest there
To wear the wealth of diadems.
On the side of the neighboring height
He saw the modest cottage light
Gleam, like a glow-worm in the night,
Through the foliage deep and dark:
Strange contrast to the splendor bright
Burning in midst of Berkley Park.

And could the marvelling man have seen
As clearly into that home serene
As into that glittering hall of pride, —
Have seen the pastor's patriarch hair
Bending over the volume wide,
And heard the old clock on the stair
Saying its " Amen " to the prayer,
And, when the evening hymn was sung,
Joining with its silver tongue, —
He had not sighed o'er his station mean,
While hearkening to that worldly din,
Nor envied the tinsel triumph thin
Of the stateliest hero of the scene.
But hearts are human moths, alas!
Fluttering against the glittering glass,
Flying from Nature's flowery ways
To worship and die at a transient blaze.

Within, beneath the chandeliers,
Wealth, envious of her two compeers,
Beauty and Wit, her shoulders bare,
Strode with her diamond front in air.

There Beauty walked, too oft a shell,
A bower of roses round a cell,
A casket exquisitely bright,
With not a jewel hid from sight;
Like those proud piles by travellers found
In foreign lands, with statues crowned,
Covered with all that charms the eye,
While within sits Poverty,
Cowering in the ancestral dust,
With scarce an ember or a crust.

And Wit, with sparkling glance, was there,
With flashing words of transient glare,
Of satire or of flattery, —
Thoughts that lorded or bowed the knee:
They who lord it with haughtiest brow
Have ever the supplest knees to bow.
All these, Wealth, Beauty, Wit, bright three, —
Graces they were by Heaven designed,
But oftener grow, through vanity,
The vices that ensnare the mind.

But there was one in whom these three
Were joined in sweetest unity, —
To all the Virtues reconciled,
But chiefly Charity's favorite child.
So bright the spirit her form enshrined,
So clearly the face displayed the mind,
That the coldest gazer's heart 'gan melt,
And, in after-days of memory, felt
A kindlier impulse toward his kind:
And it was all to welcome her
The glittering groups collected were.

Through the crowd, on her father's arm. —
How proud he was! how very proud! —
She passed, like a ray of sunshine warm
Cleaving its way through a broken cloud.

First there was silence, — breaths long drawn,
As they would breathe her beauty in,
And eyes full-orbed, as they would win
New light from her enchanted dawn;
And then the sudden whisper stirred,
Like winds within the aspens heard.
The proud man caught the applause around,
That thrilled his depths of pride profound,
Where it echoed, like a bugle wound
Near caverns that prolong the sound.

Then to her throned harp he led,
Where lustre of gold and pearl was shed,
Like the light that flushed the air
Around the maiden's pearl-looped hair.
A moment her timorous fingers tried
The chords that tremorously replied,
Like reeds beside a little lake
Warned by a breeze ere the winds awake:
She toyed with the prelude; but not long
The herald notes foreran the song.

SONG .

I.

What though my feet have wandered far
Through groves and lawns of antique shores,
Where ever to the morning star
The enamored lark her love-song pours,
And through enchanted woods and vales
Romance still walks, a spirit free,
Thrilled by the poet-nightingales:
I turn, dear native land, to thee.

II.

It is not that thy giant floods
Sweep seaward with unrivalled flow;
It is not that thy pathless woods
Have majesty no others show;
Not for thy matchless inland seas,
Wider than eagle's eye discerns,
Nor mountains vast; — 'tis not for these
My heart, dear land, to thee returns: —

III.

Not for thy seasons, though they sweep
From unknown continents of ice,
Or, waked in tropic forests deep,
Bring summer from the land of spice;
Not that thy fiery forest-trees,
At harvest-close, with splendors burn
In hues triumphant; — not for these
To thee, dear land, my steps return. —

IV.

Not only that my native hearth
Is shrined among thy greenest hills,
Or that my earliest infant mirth
Was learned among thy flowers and rills,
But, chiefly, that before thee opes
A glorious future, grand and free,
And thou hast all my brightest hopes, —
For this, dear land, I turn to thee.

To give the words by a maiden sung
After they have passed her tongue,
When more than half of all the grace
Was in her voice and on her face,
Is but to render a cup long drawn,
With all its effervescence gone;
'Tis but to treasure in after-hours
The garland of faded and dewless flowers
That in the flood of the banquet-light
Made the wearer's brow more bright.
Had another dared the same to sing,
They had denounced it a rebel thing;
But from her lips could come no wrong:
So they praised the singer and the song.

Mid those who listened, too rapt to praise,
Like blossoms that close in the sun's full blaze,
Folding the ecstasy into the heart
In silence, lest the smallest part
Should exhale on the breath of joy exprest,
Stood one, a chance-invited guest,
Half hidden by a curtain's fold,
Too modest and proud to be more bold,
A youth — the neighboring pastor's son —
Whose mind and mien had already won
The wide applause which oft exalts
Till envy finds the virtues faults.
A student he was, with cheeks grown pale,
Long bleached in that scholastic vale
Where mild-eyed Meditation camps
Among her midnight books and lamps.

But as he stood and heard her sing,
And gazed with charmed lips apart,
The joy long nestling in his heart
Flew to his cheek on flaming wing.
So feels the prisoner when his cell
Flies open, as by a miracle;
So glows he, breathing what freedom yields
That first hour in the summer fields.

Yes; love, and wonder, and delight,
All three into his breast took flight;
And those who knew young Edgar best
Noted the change on his face confessed.

Near by, with scarlet coat and plume,
Like a bonfire in the room,
An officer of the royal troops
Blazed among the admiring groups,
Who, when his eye approval glanced,
Or when he spoke the applauding word,
Deemed Berkley's honor was advanced;
And he, too, felt a new delight,
And deigned from his great warrior height
To stoop, and own his heart was stirred.

Outside, in the stars' still light,
Like a spirit of the night,
Pressing close to the window-pane,
With eyes of wonder and mirth insane,
There looked a face which shunned the gaze,
Coming and going, as a shadow plays
When the wind, with rise and fall,
Sways the elm-shade on the wall.

This with a smile the maiden saw,
Saw it come and then withdraw;
And oft they knew not why she smiled,
Nor saw the vision strange and wild
Which she beheld with looks of joy, —
The frolic-hearted truart boy.
Thus oft beside a delirious child
The watchers see upon its face
Expressions which they cannot trace,
And where its eyes so fondly turn
They look, but nothing can discern,
Still conscious of a presence near
Of what they cannot see or hear.

After the supper and the wine,
Where flowed the Moselle and the Rhine,
And Burgundy and prouder Spain,
Disputing, held divided reign, —
For Berkley deemed the worst of faults
Poor brands, or scant-provided vaults, —
Out they sallied into the air;
And the great white moon was there.
In merry groups about the green
They strolled, and praised the night serene;
Here the laugh and there the song
Waked from sleep the feathery throng,
Nested in the vernal realms
Of the poplars and the elms.
Their heads unsheathing from the wing,
Some, which only the dark makes dumb,
Wondered if the dawn had come, —
The time to deck their plumes and sing.
In the grove the whip-poor-will
Forgot his story, and sat still:
But all who tell a tale of pain
Know well the place to begin again.

Music on a waveless stream
Where the stars and moonshine gleam,
While the light oar noiseless dips,
And then, lifting, brightly drips,
As if hung with pearl-strings rare,
Caught from the water-spirits' hair;
Then the music-freighted boat
Seems some fairy ark afloat,
Filled with groups of airy elves
Playing to delight themselves,
Blowing marvellous instruments,
With a thrill of joy intense,
Until the sounds that ring afar
Seem blown from many a clarion star;
Or as the thin rays of the moon,
By some marvellous alchemy,
Were changed from light to melody,
One-half lustre, one-half tune;
Or as the veil of the other world
Were partly lifted, partly furled,
And underneath the soft notes born
In the eternal fields of morn
Were wafted, on the wings of bliss,
Out of that realm into this.

Such were the sounds there heard to flow
From off the winding stream below, —
Till suddenly a clattering steed
Dashed up the road in furious speed;
But soon the checking rein was drawn,
And now the rider gained the lawn.

And into Berkley's ear apart
He breathed a word that thrilled his heart;
And then from group to group it passed,
Quaking the breast from first to last:
Something about a rebel troop,
Like an eagle, soon to swoop;
How some of that obnoxious clan,
With horrid noise of horn and pan,
Had borne in mockery up and down,
In a rough and jolting car,
The noisiest Tory of the town,
And only spared the plumes and tar
Because they deemed the honor due
To loyalists of deeper hue.
And it was said, and well believed,
And much the king's supporters grieved,
That many a secret rebel band
Was swiftly forming through the land;
Nor could the wisest well divine
The object of their full design,

But knew it much behooved them each
To be prepared or out of reach.
And — who could tell? — before they knew,
Some lawless and marauding crew —
None guessed their number or their power —
Might choose in such a festive hour
To burst into their midst and lay
A tax which it were hard to pay.

Scarce was the warning heard before
There was swift mounting at Berkley door,
And jostling hurry down roads of dust,
As if they fled from a thunder-gust!
They swept along the highway white,
Like autumn leaves before the wind
Which heralds the drowning storm behind,
And round the far hill passed from sight.