MY LOST ART.
I was born in a small town of Virginia. My father was a physician, more respected than employed; for it was generally supposed, and justly, that he was more devoted to chemical experiment and philosophical speculation than to the ordinary routine of his profession. It was quite natural, that, in course of time, another physician should come to dash by, with fine turnout, my father's humble gig; and such, indeed, was the result. It was equally natural, that, as the dear old man looked his own fate straight in the eyes, and saw his patients falling away one by one, he should adjourn practical success to his only son,--myself. Quiet, but unremitting, were his efforts to make me avoid the rock on which his worldly fortunes had been wrecked. In vain: to me there was a light in his eye which lured me on to those visionary shores from which he warned me; and whilst he was holding out the labors and duties of a regular and steadfast practitioner as merciful and honorable among the highest, there was an undertone in his voice, of which he was unconscious, which told me plainly that the knowledge he most valued in himself was that apparently most unproductive. My mother had died several years before; my father's affection, pride, and hope rested utterly upon me. I knew not then how sad it was to disappoint him. Often, when he returned to his office, hoping to find me studying the "Materia Medica," I was discovered poring over some old volumes on the "Human Humors, or the Planetary Sympathies of the Viscera." A sincere grief filled his eyes at such times, but I could not help feeling that it was mingled with respect. The heaviest cross I had to bear was that the curious old volumes which attracted me were gradually abstracted from the library.
One day, walking with my father on the outskirts of the town, we found a merry throng gathered about the car of a travelling daguerrotypist. Having nothing more entertaining on hand, we entered the car and sat, whilst the village belles, and the newly affianced, and the young brides came for their miniatures. This was interesting; but when they were gone, my father and the artist entered upon a conversation which was far more absorbing to me, and indeed colored the whole of my subsequent life. My father made inquiries concerning the materials used in daguerrotyping, and the progress of the art; and the artist, finding him an intelligent man, entered with spirit upon his relation.
"It is, indeed, wonderful," he said, "that more has not been accomplished through this discovery; and I can attribute this to nothing but the lack amongst our poor fraternity of the capital necessary for carrying on and out the many experiments suggested to us daily in the course of our operations."
"About what point," asked my father, "do these suggestions usually gather?"
"That which chiefly excites our speculation is the unfathomed mystery of the nitrate of silver. The story of this wonderful agent is not half unfolded; and every artist knows that its power is limited only by the imperfection of the materials with which it has to act. Its sensitiveness approaches that of thought itself. I have a very small quantity of highest quality which I use on rare occasions and generally for experiments. A few days ago I caught with it this first flash of sunrise,--see, is it not perfect?"
The picture which he showed us was, indeed, beautiful. A wave of light bursting upon the plate to a foamy whiteness, almost beyond the power of the eye to bear. But that which excited me most was the photograph of a star, which he had fixed after highly magnifying it. What a fascination there was about that little point of fire!
It turned out to be the star under which I was born: its fatal influences were already upon me: I returned home to pass a night sleepless, indeed, but not without dreams.
Why is it that a new idea, taking possession of the young, raising some new object for their pursuit, does, in the proportion of its power, foreclose even the most accustomed confidences? My father was precisely the one man living who would have sympathized in the purpose which from the time of this visit sucked into its whirl all my desires and powers; but that purpose seemed at once to turn my heart to stone. For a week I was acting a part before the kindest and simplest of men; and I deliberately went forward to reach my object over his happiness and even life.
When the daguerrotypist left town, I easily found the direction he had taken; and, after waiting several days to prevent any suspicious coincidence in the time of our departure, I one night, soon after midnight, crept from my bed and followed him. I overtook him at a village some twenty miles distant, where he was remaining a day or two, and easily procured an engagement with him, since I desired nothing but to serve him and be taught the mechanical details of his art. My father had no clue whatever to my direction, for he had not dreamed of anything unusual in my thoughts or plans. He was now entirely alone. But I knew that I was helpless against the phantom which was leading me forth; it also contained a stimulant which was able to bear me safely through seasons of self-reproach and depression.
For about six months I got along with the artist very well. My desire to learn made me attentive, prompt, and respectful. But at the end of that time I had learned all that he could teach me, and, as I had engaged with him for an ulterior object, the business began to lose its interest for me, and the inconveniences of wandering about in a car, hitherto unthought of, were now felt. The relations between my master and myself had been so agreeable that for a long time this change in my feelings was not alluded to in words. He was a thrifty Yankee, and with a Yankee's sense of justice; so he offered me a fair proportion of the profits. But at the end of the year he told me that he thought I was "too much of a Virginian" ever to follow this occupation, and that, having seen my father and known his position, he was surprised that he had ever favored such a pursuit for me. This was, indeed, the falsehood I had told him.
It was in a Canadian village that I parted with this gentlemanly and generous New-Englander. When I left him, I was not penniless, but a bitter sense of my loneliness was upon me, and a consciousness of the uncandid and cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days afterward, sitting beside the driver on the stage-coach, looked from a hill upon the house in which I was born. A pang shot through my heart at that instant. Until that moment I had dreamed of my father's seeing me whilst I was yet a great way off, of resting my weary head upon his warm, infolding heart. But now the dream faded, and a pain as of an undying worm gnawed already on my soul. I paused at the gate, nearly paralyzed by fear. Was he dead? No; I felt this was not the case; but I felt that something worse than this was about to befall me. I gained strength to enter the hall, and sat down there. I heard several voices. I went on to the well-known chamber. A physician and a nurse were there. Standing in the door a moment, I heard my father say in a whisper, "If he ever comes back, let him have all; tell him his father loved him to the last; but do not tell him more, do not make him suffer,--mark you!" A moment more, and I was kneeling by his dying bed. "My father, my father, I have murdered you!" After some moments it was impressed upon the old man that his penitent son was by his side. I almost looked for the curse that I deserved; but a peaceful light was on his face as he said,--"I'm sorry I hid the books from you, child. I meant well,--I meant well,--I erred. If I can help you from up there, I will." Life departed with these words.
It will not be wondered that I became a recluse. The recluse is usually one cast up from such bleak experiences of sin and grief that he fears to launch upon life again, and only seeks to hide him in any cavern that may be found along the shore that has received him. Thus it was with me, at least. I dreaded to look one of my townsmen in the face,--they knew all: and many years after, when the harsh judgments which would have received me were softened by my lonely penance and sadness, and proffers came from society, my solitude had become sacred to me; and that old star which the daguerrotypist had shown me still reigned.
My father had left me enough property to enable me to carry forward the investigations and experiments to which all voices seemed to call me. I had an upper room prepared with a skylight and all other appliances. I purchased an excellent instrument, and some very strong diameters for magnifying photographs. The trials I had made convinced me that the minuteness and extent of objects photographed were limited only by the comparative coarseness of the materials through and on which the object passed. So I was very particular in selecting lenses. Further trials, however, led me to believe that the plate was still more important. Obtaining a steel of perfect grain, I spent days in giving it the highest polish it would bear, and kept it ready for any important office. By means of a long and bright tin reflector, (the best,) my artificial light was ready, in case I should desire to photograph at night; and, indeed, it was the hope of making some astronomic discovery that was leading me on.
Calm and clear was the night on which I brought these my treasures forth. Jupiter was blazing in the heavens, and challenged Art to seize his majestic lineaments. It turned out a point of fire much like that which my master had exhibited to me. I mixed a finer nitrate, repolished my plate, and was this time rewarded by seeing, under all the diameters which I had, the satellites also. Very much thrilled even with this degree of success, and taking the picture on paper, I put my plate away, and set myself to study what I should do next. It had not yet occurred to me to inquire of myself what definite thing I really was after. My deepest hope was in the undefinableness of its object: I knew only that a clear idea (and Plato says all clear ideas are true) of the subtile susceptibilities of nitrate of silver, limited only by materials, had engendered within me, through much pondering, an embryo idea, to the development of which my life was intuitively consecrated. I would not define it to myself, because I felt (intuitively, also) that it was something illimitable, therefore indefinable.
I began to experiment now with lenses, placing various kinds and powers one above another. It occurred to me that I had hitherto brought their power to bear only upon whole, objects. But what would be the result of magnifying an object daguerrotyped until it covered the disc of the reflector, then photographing it, and afterward magnifying a central segment of the picture to its utmost, and again renewing the experiment on this? An infinite series of analyses might be carried into the heart of an image; and might not something therein, invisible not only to the naked eye, but to the strongest magnifier, be revealed? Following this reflection, I took a common stereoscopic view and subjected it to my lenses. It was an ordinary view of a Swiss hamlet, the chief object of which was an inn with a sign over the door surmounted by a bush. The only objects upon the sign discernible with a common convex eye-glass were a mug of beer on one side and a wine-bottle on the other. Their position indicated that something else was on the sign: the stronger diameters presently brought out "CARL ELZNERS"; the strongest I had were exhausted in bringing out "GARTEN UND GASTHAUS." When this, the utmost dimension, was reached, I photographed it. Then, taking ordinary magnifiers, I began upon that part of the sign where, if anything remained unevoked, it would be found. The reader will observe, that, each time that the result of one enlargement was made the subject for another, the loss was in the field or range which must be paid for intensity and minuteness. Thus, in the end, there might appear but one letter of a long sentence, or a part of a letter. In this case, however, the result was better than I had expected: I read distinctly, "--EIN, WEI--"; and Luther's popular lines, "Wer liebt nicht wein, weib," etc., were brought to my mind at once. Thus I had the sign in full: the powerful agent of the sun on earth had fixed Carl Elzner and his Protestant beer-garden on the stereoscopic view forever, whether the dull eyes of men could read them or not.
Thrilled and animated by this success, I hastened to apply the same plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the whim of an over-excited brain. But now I thought only of the assertion of the daguerrotypist, that "the nitrate was limited in sensitiveness only by the imperfection of the materials," (i. e. plates, glass, reflectors, etc.,) and I had heard the same repeated by the paper which had finally replaced the picture it held. I now determined to risk on the experiment the elegant steel plate on whose polish I had spent so much pains and time. I took the portrait of Jupiter thereon, and fixed it forever. This time I could not be mistaken in supposing that as the field of vision shrank some strange forms appeared; but I could be certain of none which were essentially different from those revealed by the largest telescopes. My narrowing and intensifying process then began to warn me of another failure: when I had reached the last point at which the image could be held at all, the grain of the steel plate was like great ropes, and it was only after resting my eyes for some time, then suddenly turning them upon it, that I could see any picture at all. For an instant it would look like an exceedingly delicate lichen,--then nothing was visible but huge bars of steel.
Ah, with what despair did I see the grand secret which had so long hovered before me and led my whole life now threatening to elude and abandon me forever! "But," I cried, "it shall not go so easily, by Heaven! If there be a genius in the casket, unsealed it shall be!"
I resolved to give up steel for some metal or substance of finer grain. I almost impoverished myself in purchasing plates of the finer metals, before it occurred to me to try glass, and had to laugh at my own stupidity when I discovered that in the last analysis glass showed much smoother than any of the rest. I immediately obtained a great many specimens of glass, and spent much time in subjecting them to my lenses only to see how much fibrous appearance, or unevenness, could be brought before the eye from a smooth surface. I found one excellent specimen, and gave myself up to grinding it to the utmost extent consistent with its strength.
I felt now that I was about to make a final test. It would be not only a test of my new plate, but of my own sanity, which I had at various times doubted. I felt, that, unless my idea should be proved true, I could no longer trust my reason, which had at every step beckoned me on to the next. I had studied medicine enough in my father's office long ago to know that either sanity or insanity may come as a reality from a mind's determined verdict on itself. When, therefore, I again sat down to analyze my daguerrotype of the planet, it was with the awe and fear which might beset one standing on a ledge between a frightful chasm and a transcendent height, and not knowing which was to receive him.
From the first burst of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but each time the light deepened. According to my principle, there was no doubt that some object would be revealed before the space became too limited, provided nothing interfered with the distinctness of the picture. At length I calculated that I was selecting about twenty square miles from about seven hundred. Forms were distinct, but they were rigid, and painfully reminded me of the astronomic maps. About five removes from this, I judged that the space I was looking at must be about ten feet square. I was sure that the objects really occupying those ten feet must be in my picture, if I could evoke them.
On this I placed a mild power, and was startled at finding something new. The picture which had been so full of rigid and sharp outlines now became a confusion of ever-changing forms. Now it was light,--now shadow; angles faded into curves; but out of the swarming mass of shapes I could not, after hours of watching, obtain one that seemed like any form of life or art that I had ever seen.
Had I, then, come to the end of my line? My eyes so pained me, and had been so tried, that I strove to persuade myself that the evanescent forms resulting from my unsatisfactory experiment must be optical illusions. I determined to let matters rest as they were until the next day, when my brain would be less heated and my eye calmer and steadier.
They will never let a man alone,--they, the herd, who cry "Madman!" when any worker and his work which they cannot comprehend rise before them. In the great moment when, after years of climbing, I stood victorious on the summit, they claimed that I had fallen to the chasm's depths, and confined me here at Staunton as a hopeless lunatic. This heart of mine, burning with the grandest discovery ever made, must throb itself away in a cell, because it could not contain its high knowledge, but went forth among men once more to mingle ideal rays with their sunshine, and make every wind, as it passed over the earth, waft a higher secret than was ever before attained. A lunatic! I! But next me in array are the prisons of the only sane ones of history, the cells dug by Inquisitorial Ignorance in every age for its wisest men. Now I understand them; walls cannot impede the hands we stretch out to each other across oceans and centuries. One day the purblind world will invoke in its prayers the holy army of the martyrs of Thought.
Yes, I was mad,--mad to think that the world's horny eyes could not receive the severe light of knowledge,--mad as was he who ran through the streets and cried, "Eureka!" The head and front of my madness have this extent,--no more. And for this I must write the rest of my story here amid iron gratings, through which, however, thank God, my familiars, the stars, and the red, blue, and golden planets, glance kindly, saying, "Courage, brother! soon thou shaft rise to us, to whom thou belongest!" Yet I will write it: one day men will read, and say, "Come, let us garnish the sepulchre of one immured because his stupid age could not understand!" and then, doubtless, they will go forth to stone the seer on whose tongue lies the noblest secret of the Universe for that day.
When I left the last experiment mentioned in these pages, in order to recover steadiness of brain and nerve, and to relieve my overtaxed eyes, I had no hope of reaching success in any other way than that pointed out in the principle which I was pressing,--a principle whose importance is proved in the familiar experiments on stereoscopic views, whereby things entirely invisible to the naked eye are disclosed by lenses. But that night I dreamed out the success which had eluded my waking hours. I have nothing to say here about the phenomenon of dreaming: I state only the fact. In my dream there appeared to me my father, bearing in his left hand a plate of glass, and in his right a phial of bright blue liquid which he seemed to be pouring on the polished surface. The phial was of singular shape, having a long slender neck rising from a round globe. When I awoke, I found myself standing in the middle of the floor with hands stretched out appealingly to the vacant air.
Acknowledging, as I did, nothing but purely scientific methods,--convinced that nothing could be reached but through all the intervening steps fixed by Nature between Reason and Truth,--I should, at any other than such a weary time, have forgotten the vision in an hour. But now it took a deeper hold on my imagination. That my father should be associated in my dream with these experiments was natural; the glass plate which he had held was the same I was using; as for the phial, might it not be some old compound that I had known him or the daguerrotypist use, now casually spun out of the past and woven in with my present pursuits? Nevertheless, I was glad to shove aside this rationalistic interpretation: on the verge of drowning, I magnified the straw to a lifeboat, and caught at it. I pardoned myself for going to the shelves which still held my father's medicines, and examining each of the phials there. But when I turned away without finding one which at all answered to my dream, I felt mean and miserable; deeply disappointed at not having found the phial, I was ashamed at my retrogression to ages which dealt with incantations, and luck, and other impostures. I was shamed to the conclusion that the phial with its blue liquid was something I had read of in the curious old books which my father had hidden away from me, and which, strange to say, I had never been able to find since his death.
Whilst I was meditating thus, there was a knock at my door, and a drayman entered with a chest, which he said had belonged to my father, and had been by him deposited several years before with a friend who lived a few miles from our village. I could scarcely close and bolt the door after the man had departed; as he brought in the chest, I had seen through the lid the phial with the blue liquid. So certain was I of this, that before I opened it I went and withdrew my glass plate, repolished it, and made all ready for a final experiment. Opening the chest, I found the old books which had been abstracted, and a small medicine-box, in which was the phial seen in my dream.
But now the question arose, How was the blue fluid to be applied? I had not looked closely at the plate which my father held to see whether it was already prepared for an impression; and so I was at a loss to know whether this new fluid was to prepare the glass with a more perfect polish, or to mingle with the subtile nitrate itself. Unfortunately I tried the last first, and there was no result at all,--except the destruction of a third of the precious fluid. Cleaning the plate perfectly, I burnt into it, drop by drop, the whole of the contents of the phial. As I drained the last drop from it, it reddened on the glass as if it were the last drop of my heart's blood poured out.
At the first glance on the star-picture thus taken, I knew that I was successful. Jupiter shone like the nucleus of a comet, even before a second power was upon it. As picture after picture was formed, belts of the most exquisite hues surrounded the luminous planet, which seemed rolling up to me, hurled from lens to lens, as if wrested from its orbit by a commanding force. Plainer and plainer grew its surface; mountain-ranges, without crags or chasms, smooth and undulating, emerged; it was zoned with a central sunlit sea. On each scene of the panorama I lingered, and each was retained as well as the poor materials would allow. I was cautious enough to take two pictures of each distinct phase,--one to keep, if this happy voyage should be my last, and the other of course as the subject from which a centre should be selected for a new expansion.
At last there stood plainly before my eye a tower!--a tower, slender and high, with curved dome, the work of Art! A cry burst from my lips,--I fainted with joy. Afraid to touch the instrument with my trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took the centre of its dome as the next point for expansion. Slowly, slowly, as if the fate of a solar system depended on each turn of the screw, I drew on the final view. An instant of gray confusion,--another of tremulous crystallization,--and, scarcely in contact with the tower's dome, as if about to float from it, hovered an aerial ship, with two round balls suspended above it. Again one little point was taken, for I felt that this was not the culmination of my vision; and now two figures appeared, manifestly human, but their features and dress as yet undistinguishable.
Another turn, and I looked upon the face of a glorious man!
Another, and the illusion, Space, shrank away beneath my feet, my eye soared over her abysses, and gazed into the eye of an immortal.
But now,--oh, horror!--turning back to earth, I remembered that I had not analyzed the precious liquid which could so link world with world. Seized with a sudden agony, I tried to strain one least drop more; but, alas! the power had perished from the earth!
For this loss I deserve all that has happened to me. My haste to fulfil my life's object proved me the victim of a mental lust, and I saw why the highest truth is not revealed: simply, it awaits those who can receive and not be intoxicated by it. And now the planet which I had disobeyed for another avenges itself,--seeing, naturally, in strange results, whose methods are untraceable, nothing but monomania. The photographs, in which the pollens of two planet-flowers mingle, lie in my attic, dust-eaten:--"Above all, the patient must not see anything of that kind," has been the order ever since I published a card announcing my discovery to my fellow-citizens.
But they were gentle; they did not take away all. The old books are with me, each a benison from a brother. The best works of ancient times are, I think, best understood when read by prison-light.
Hist! some visitor comes! Many come from curiosity to see one who thinks he descried a man in a planet "Distinguished man of science from Boston to see me,"--ah, indeed! Celebrated paper on tadpoles, I suppose! But now that I look closer, I like my Boston man-of-science's eye, and his voice is good. I have not yet exhausted the fingers of one hand in counting up all the sane people who have visited me since I have been immured.
How do I test them?
As now I test you.
Here my treasure of treasures I open. It is the old suppressed volume of John de Sacro Bosco, inscribed to that Castilian Alphonso who dared to have the tables of Ptolemy corrected. (Had he not been a king, he had been mad: such men as Bosco were mad after Alphonso died.) And thus to my curious scientific visitor I read what I ask may go into his report along with the description of my case.
"John de Sacro Bosco sendeth this book to Alphonso de Castile. A. D. 1237."
"They alone are kings who know." "Ken and Can are twins." "God will not be hurried."
"Sacred are the fools: God understandeth them."
"Impatient, I cried, 'I will clear the stair that leadeth to God!' Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge,--'Aha, this cometh of ascending stairways!'"
"The silk-worm span its way up to wings. I am ashamed and dumb, who would soar ere I had toiled.
"When riseth an Ideal in the concave of some vaulting heart or brain, it is a new heaven and signeth a new earth."
"Each clear Idea that ascendeth the vault of Pure Reason is a Bethlehem star; be sure a Messias is born for it on the Earth; the new sign lit up in the heaven of Vision is a new power set in motion among men; and, do what the Herods will, Earth's incense, myrrh, yea, even its gold, must gather to the feet of the Omnipotent Child,--the IDEA."
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IN WAR-TIME.
INSCRIBED TO W.B.
As they who watch by sick-beds find relief Unwittingly from the great stress of grief And anxious care in fantasies outwrought From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet, Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why They scarcely know or ask,--so, thou and I, Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong In the endurance which outwearies Wrong, With meek persistence baffling brutal force, And trusting God against the universe,-- We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes, The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, And wrung by keenest sympathy for all Who give their loved ones for the living wall 'Twixt law and treason,--in this evil day May haply find, through automatic play Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, And hearten others with the strength we gain. I know it has been said our times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Believe the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's moral cowardice. As Nürnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, And Kranach painted by his Luther's side, And through the war-march of the Puritan The silver stream of Marvell's music ran, So let the household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung,-- So let us hold against the hosts of Night And Slavery all our vantage-ground of Light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,-- But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace: No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal manners and barbaric speech. And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear Of the great common burden our full share, Let none upbraid us that the waves entice Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device, Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen away From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day. Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador Sings in the leafless elms, and from the shore Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try To time a simple legend to the sounds Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,-- A song of breeze and billow, such as might Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love. (So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay, And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.) Something it has--a flavor of the sea, And the sea's freedom--which reminds of thee. Its faded picture, dimly smiling down From the blurred fresco of the ancient town, I have not touched with warmer tints in vain, If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought from pain. |
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AMY WENTWORTH.
Her fingers shame the ivory keys They dance so light along; The bloom upon her parted lips Is sweeter than the song. O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles! Her thoughts are not of thee: She better loves the salted wind, The voices of the sea. Her heart is like an outbound ship That at its anchor swings; The murmur of the stranded shell Is in the song she sings. She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, But dreams the while of one Who watches from his sea-blown deck The icebergs in the sun. She questions all the winds that blow, And every fog-wreath dim, And bids the sea-birds flying north Bear messages to him. She speeds them with the thanks of men He perilled life to save, And grateful prayers like holy oil To smooth for him the wave. Brown Viking of the fishing-smack! Fair toast of all the town!-- The skipper's jerkin ill beseems The lady's silken gown! But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear For him the blush of shame Who dares to set his manly gifts Against her ancient name. The stream is brightest at its spring, And blood is not like wine; Nor honored less than he who heirs Is he who founds a line. Full lightly shall the prize be won, If love be Fortune's spur; And never maiden stoops to him Who lifts himself to her. Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, With stately stair-ways worn By feet of old Colonial knights And ladies gentle-born. Still green about its ample porch The English ivy twines, Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs. And on her, from the wainscot old, Ancestral faces frown,-- And this has worn the soldier's sword, And that the judge's gown. But, strong of will and proud as they, She walks the gallery-floor As if she trod her sailor's deck By stormy Labrador! The sweet-brier blooms on Kittery-side, And green are Elliot's bowers; Her garden is the pebbled beach, The mosses are her flowers. She looks across the harbor-bar To see the white gulls fly, His greeting from the Northern sea Is in their clanging cry. She hums a song, and dreams that he, As in its romance old, Shall homeward ride with silken sails And masts of beaten gold! Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, And high and low mate ill; But love has never known a law Beyond its own sweet will! |