The peasant boy watches the midnight sky;
He sees the meteor dropping from on high;
He hastens whither the bright guest hath flown,
And finds—a mass of black, unseemly stone.
Disdainful, disappointed, turns he home.
If a philosopher that way had come,
He would have seized the waif with great delight,
And honored it as an aerolite.
But truly it would need a Cuvier's mind
High meaning in my meteors to find.
Well, in my museum there is room to spare—
I'll let them stay till Cuvier goes there!
SADNESS.
Lonely lady, tell me why
That abandonment of eye?
Life is full, and nature fair;
How canst thou dream of dull despair?
Life is full and nature fair;
A dull folly is despair;
But the heart lies still and tame
For want of what it may not claim.
Lady, chide that foolish heart,
And bid it act a nobler part;
The love thou couldst be bid resign
Never could be worthy thine.
O, I know, and knew it well,
How unworthy was the spell
In its silken band to bind
My heaven-born, heaven-seeking mind.
Thou lonely moon, thou knowest well
Why I yielded to the spell;
Just so thou didst condescend
Thy own precept to offend.
When wondering nymphs thee questioned why
That abandonment of eye,
Crying, "Dian,[49] heaven's queen,
What can that trembling eyelash mean?"
Waning, over ocean's breast,
Thou didst strive to hide unrest
From the question of their eyes,
Unseeing in their dull surprise.
Thy Endymion had grown old;
Thy only love was marred with cold;
No longer to the secret cave
Thy ray could pierce, and answer have.
No more to thee, no more, no more,
Till thy circling life be o'er,
A mutual heart shall be a home,
Of weary wishes happy tomb.
No more, no more—O words which sever
Hearts from their hopes, to part forever!
They can believe it never!
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.[50]
Some names there are at sight of which will rise
Visions of triumph to the dullest eyes;
They breathe of garlands from a grateful race,
They tell of victory o'er all that's base;
To write them eagles might their plumage give,
And granite rocks should yield, that they may live.
Others there are at sight of which will rise
Visions of beauty to all loving eyes,
Of radiant sweetness, or of gentle grace,
The poesy of manner or of face,
Spell of intense, if not of widest power;
The strong the ages rule; the fair, the hour.
And there are names at sight of which will rise
Visions of goodness to the mourner's eyes;
They tell of generosity untired,
Which gave to others all the heart desired;
Of Virtue's uncomplaining sacrifice,
And holy hopes which sought their native skies.
If I could hope that at my name would rise
Visions like these, before those gentle eyes,
How gladly would I place it in the shrine
Where many honored names are linked with thine,
And know, if lone and far my pathway lies,
My name is living 'mid the good and wise.
It must not be, for now I know too well
That those to whom my name has aught to tell
O'er baffled efforts would lament or blame.
Who heeds a breaking reed?—a sinking flame?
Best wishes and kind thoughts I give to thee,
But mine, indeed, an empty name would be.
TO S. C.
Our friend has likened thee to the sweet fern,
Which with no flower salutes the ardent day,
Yet, as the wanderer pursues his way,
While the dews fall, and hues of sunset burn,
Sheds forth a fragrance from the deep green brake,
Sweeter than the rich scents that gardens make.
Like thee, the fern loves well the hallowed shade
Of trees that quietly aspire on high;
Amid such groves was consecration made
Of vestals, tranquil as the vestal sky.
Like thee, the fern doth better love to hide
Beneath the leaf the treasure of its seed,
Than to display it, with an idle pride,
To any but the careful gatherer's heed—
A treasure known to philosophic ken,
Garnered in nature, asking nought of men;
Nay, can invisible the wearer make,
Who would unnoted in life's game partake.
But I will liken thee to the sweet bay,
Which I first learned, in the Cohasset woods,
To name upon a sweet and pensive day
Passed in their ministering solitudes.
I had grown weary of the anthem high
Of the full waves, cheering the patient rocks;
I had grown weary of the sob and sigh
Of the dull ebb, after emotion's shocks;
My eye was weary of the glittering blue
And the unbroken horizontal line;
My mind was weary, tempted to pursue
The circling waters in their wide design,
Like snowy sea-gulls stooping to the wave,
Or rising buoyant to the utmost air,
To dart, to circle, airily to lave,
Or wave-like float in foam-born lightness fair:
I had swept onward like the wave so full,
Like sea weed now left on the shore so dull.
I turned my steps to the retreating hills,
Rejected sand from that great haughty sea,
Watered by nature with consoling rills,
And gradual dressed with grass, and shrub, and tree;
They seemed to welcome me with timid smile,
That said, "We'd like to soothe you for a while;
You seem to have been treated by the sea
In the same way that long ago were we."
They had not much to boast, those gentle slopes,
For the wild gambols of the sea-sent breeze
Had mocked at many of their quiet hopes,
And bent and dwarfed their fondly cherished trees;
Yet even in those marks of by-past wind,
There was a tender stilling for my mind.
Hiding within a small but thick-set wood,
I soon forgot the haughty, chiding flood.
The sheep bell's tinkle on the drowsy ear,
With the bird's chirp, so short, and light, and clear,
Composed a melody that filled my heart
With flower-like growths of childish, artless art,
And of the tender, tranquil life I lived apart.
It was an hour of pure tranquillity,
Like to the autumn sweetness of thine eye,
Which pries not, seeks not, and yet clearly sees—
Which wooes not, beams not, yet is sure to please.
Hours passed, and sunset called me to return
Where its sad glories on the cold wave burn.
Rising from my kind bed of thick-strewn leaves,
A fragrance the astonished sense receives,
Ambrosial, searching, yet retiring, mild:
Of that soft scene the soul was it? or child?
'Twas the sweet bay I had unwitting spread,
A pillow for my senseless, throbbing head,
And which, like all the sweetest things, demands,
To make it speak, the grasp of alien hands.
All that this scene did in that moment tell,
I since have read, O wise, mild friend! in thee.
Pardon the rude grasp, its sincerity,
And feel that I, at least, have known thee well.
Grudge not the green leaves ravished from thy stem,
Their music, should I live, muse-like to tell;
Thou wilt, in fresher green forgetting them,
Send others to console me for farewell.
Thou wilt see why the dim word of regret
Was made the one to rhyme with Margaret.
But to the Oriental parent tongue,
Sunrise of Nature, does my chosen name,
My name of Leila, as a spell, belong,
Teaching the meaning of each temporal blame;
I chose it by the sound, not knowing why;
But since I know that Leila stands for night,
I own that sable mantle of the sky,
Through which pierce, gem-like, points of distant light;
As sorrow truths, so night brings out her stars;
O, add not, bard! that those stars shine too late!
While earth grows green amid the ocean jars,
And trumpets yet shall wake the slain of her long century-wars.
LINES WRITTEN IN BOSTON ON A BEAUTIFUL AUTUMNAL DAY.
As late we lived upon the gentle stream,
Nature refused us smiles and kindly airs;
The sun but rarely deigned a pallid gleam;
Then clouds came instantly, like glooms and tears,
Upon the timid flickerings of our hope;
The moon, amid the thick mists of the night,
Had scarcely power her gentle eye to ope,
And climb the heavenly steeps. A moment bright
Shimmered the hectic leaves, then rudely torn
By winds that sobbed to see the wreck they made,
Upon the amber waves were thickly borne
Adonis' gardens for the realms of shade,
While thoughts of beauty past all wish for livelier life forbade.
So sped the many days of tranquil life,
And on the stream, or by the mill's bright fire,
The wailing winds had told of distant strife,
Still bade us for the moment yield desire
To think, to feel, the moment gave,—we needed not aspire!
Returning here, no harvest fields I see,
Nor russet beauty of the thoughtful year.
Where is the honey of the city bee?
No leaves upon this muddy stream appear.
The housekeeper is getting in his coal,
The lecturer his showiest thoughts is selling;
I hear of Major Somebody, the Pole,
And Mr. Lyell, how rocks grow, is telling;
But not a breath of thoughtful poesy
Does any social impulse bring to me;
But many cares, sad thoughts of men unwise,
Base yieldings, and unransomed destinies,
Hopes uninstructed, and unhallowed ties.
Yet here the sun smiles sweet as heavenly love,
Upon the eve of earthly severance;
The youthfulest tender clouds float all above,
And earth lies steeped in odors like a trance.
The moon looks down as though she ne'er could leave us,
And these last trembling leaves sigh, "Must they too deceive us?"
Surely some life is living in this light,
Truer than mine some soul received last night;
I cannot freely greet this beauteous day,
But does not thy heart swell to hail the genial ray?
I would not nature these last loving words in vain should say.