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Title: Kathrina—A Poem

Author: J. G. Holland

Release date: October 10, 2020 [eBook #63423]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATHRINA—A POEM ***

KATHRINA

DR. J. G. HOLLAND'S WRITINGS.

Complete Works. 16 Volumes. Small 12mo.

Sold separately.

Bitter-Sweet

Kathrina

The Mistress of the Manse

Puritan's Guest and other Poems

Titcomb's Letters to Young People

Gold-Foil

Lessons in Life

Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects

Concerning the Jones Family

Every-Day Topics. First Series

Every-Day Topics. Second Series

Sevenoaks

The Bay Path

Arthur Bonnicastle

Miss Gilbert's Career

Nicholas Minturn

KATHRINA

A POEM

BY

J. G. HOLLAND

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1893.

COPYRIGHT BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO.

1867

COPYRIGHT BY

J. G HOLLAND

1881

TROW'S

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,

NEW YORK.

I DEDICATE

"KATHRINA"

THE WORK OF MY HAND

TO

ELIZABETH

THE WIFE OF MY HEART

CONTENTS

A TRIBUTE

PART I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

COMPLAINT

PART II.

LOVE

A REFLECTION

PART III.

LABOR

DESPAIR

PART IV.

CONSUMMATION

KATHRINA.

A TRIBUTE.

More human, more divine than we—

In truth, half human, half divine—

Is woman, when good stars agree

To temper with their beams benign

The hour of her nativity.

The fairest flower the green earth bears,

Bright with the dew and light of heaven,

Is, of the double life she wears,

The type, in grace and glory given

By soil and sun in equal shares.

True sister of the Son of Man:

True sister of the Son of God:

What marvel that she leads the van

Of those who in the path he trod,

Still bear the cross and wear the ban?

If God be in the sky and sea,

And live in light and ride the storm,

Then God is God, although He be

Enshrined within a woman's form;

And claims glad reverence from me.

So, as I worship Him in Christ,

And in the Forms of Earth and Air,

I worship Him imparadised,

And throned within her bosom fair

Whom vanity hath not enticed.

O! woman—mother! Woman—wife!—

The sweetest names that language knows!

Thy breast, with holy motives rife,

With holiest affection glows,

Thou queen, thou angel of my life!

Noble and fine in his degree

Is the best man my heart receives;

And this my heart's supremest plea

For him: he feels, acts, lives, believes,

And seems, and is, the likest thee.

O men! O brothers! Well I know

That with her nature in our souls

Is born the elemental woe—

The brutal impulse that controls,

And drives, or drags, the godlike low.

Ambition, appetite and pride—

These throng and thrall the hearts of men

These plat the thorns, and pierce the side

Of Him, who, in our souls again,

Is spit upon, and crucified.

The greed for gain, the thirst for power,

The lust that blackens while it burns:

Ah! these the whitest souls deflour!

And one, or all of these by turns,

Rob man of his divinest dower!

Yet man, who shivers like a straw

Before Temptation's lightest breeze,

Assumes the master—gives the law

To her who, on her bended knees,

Resists the black-winged thunder-flaw!

To him who deems her weak and vain,

And boasts his own exceeding might,

She clings through darkest fortune fain;

Still loyal though the ruffian smite;

Still true, though crime his hands distain!

And is this weakness? Is it not

The strength of God, that loves and bears

Though He be slighted or forgot

In damning crimes, or driving cares,

And closest clings in darkest lot?

Not many friends my life has made;

Few have I loved, and few are they

Who in my hand their hearts have laid;

And these were women. I am gray,

But never have I been betrayed.

These words—this tribute—for the sake

Of truth to God and womankind!

These—that my heart may cease to ache

With love and gratitude confined,

And burning from my lips to break!

These—to that sisterhood of grace

That numbers in its sacred list

My mother, risen to her place;

My wife, but yester-morning kissed,

And folded in Love's last embrace!

This tribute of a love profound

As ever moved the heart of man,

To those to whom my life is bound,

To her in whom my life began,

And her whose love my life hath crowned!

Immortal Love! Thou still hast wings

To lift me to those radiant fields,

Where Music waits with trembling strings,

And Verse her happy numbers yields,

And all the soul within me sings.

So from the lovely Pagan dream

I call no more the Tuneful Nine;

For Woman is my Muse Supreme;

And she with fire and flight divine,

Shall light and lead me to my theme.

PART I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

Thou lovely vale of sweetest stream that flows:

Winding and willow-fringed Connecticut!

Swift to thy fairest scenes my fancy flies,

As I recall the story of a life

Which there began in years of sinless hope,

And merged maturely into hopeless sin.

O! golden dawning of a day of storms,

That fell ere noontide into rayless night!

O! beautiful initial, vermeil-flowered,

And bright with cherub-eyes and effigies,

To the black-letter volume of my life!

O! faëry gateway, gilt and garlanded,

And shining in the sun, to gloomy groves

Of shadowy cypress, and to sunless streams,

Feeding with bane the deadly nightshade's roots,—

To vexing labyrinths of doubt and fear,

And deep abysses of despair and death!

Back to thy peaceful villages and fields,

My memory, like a weary pilgrim, comes

With scrip and burdon, to repose awhile,—

To pluck a daisy from a lonely grave

Where long ago, in common sepulture,

I laid my mother and my faith in God;

To fix the record of a single day

So memorably wonderful and sweet

Its power of inspiration lingers still,—

So full of her dear presence, so divine

With the melodious breathing of her words,

And the warm radiance of her loving smile,

That tears fall readily as April rain

At its recall; to pass in swift review

The years of adolescence, and the paths

Of glare and gloom through which, by passion led

I reached the fair possession of my power,

And won the dear possession of my love,

And then—farewell!

Queen-village of the meads

Fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned,

With jewelled homes around her lifted brow,

And coronal of ancient forest trees—

Northampton sits, and rules her pleasant realm.

There where the saintly Edwards heralded

The terrors of the Lord, and men bowed low

Beneath the menace of his awful words;

And there where Nature, with a thousand tongues

Tender and true, from vale and mountain-top,

And smiling streams, and landscapes piled afar,

Proclaimed a gentler Gospel, I was born.

In an old home, beneath an older elm—

A fount of weeping greenery, that dripped

Its spray of rain and dew upon the roof—

I opened eyes on life; and now return,

Among the visions of my early years,

Two so distinct that all the rest grow dim:

My mother's pale, fond face and tearful eyes,

Bent upon me in Love's absorbing trance,

From the low window where she watched my play;

And, after this, the wondrous elm, that seemed

To my young fancy like an airy bosk,

Poised by a single stem upon the earth,

And thronged by instant marvels. There in Spring

I heard with joy the cheery blue-bird's note;

There sang rejoicing robins after rain;

And there within the emerald twilight, which

Defied the mid-day sun, from bough to bough—

A torch of downy flame—the oriole

Passed to his nest, to feed the censer-fires

Which Love had lit for Airs of Heaven to swing.

There, too, through all the weird September-eves

I heard the harsh, reiterant katydids

Rasp the mysterious silence. There I watched

The glint of stars, playing at hide-and-seek

Behind the swaying foliage, till drawn

By tender hands to childhood's balmy rest.

My Mother and the elm! Too soon I learned

That o'er me hung, and o'er the widowed one

Who gave me birth, with broader boughs,

Haunted by sabler wings and sadder sounds,

A darker shadow than the mighty elm!

I caught the secret in the street from those

Who pointed at me as I passed, or paused

To gaze in sighing pity on my play;

From playmates who, forbidden to divulge

The knowledge they possessed, with childish tricks

Of indirection strove in vain to hide

Their awful meaning in unmeaning phrase;

From kisses which were pitiful; from words

Gentler than love's because compassionate;

From deep, unconscious sighs out of the heart

Of her who loved me best, and from her tears

That freest flowed when I was happiest.

From frailest filaments of evidence,

From dark allusions faintly overheard,

From hint and look and sudden change of theme

When I approached, from widely scattered words

Remembered well, and gathered all at length

Into consistent terms, I know not how

I wrought the full conclusion, nor how young.

I only know that when a little child

I learned, though no one told, that he who gave

My life to me in madness took his own—

Took it from fear of want, though he possessed

The finest fortune in the rich old town.

Thenceforth I had a secret which I kept—

Kept by my mother with as close a tongue—

A secret which embittered every cup.

It bred rebellion in me—filled my soul,

Opening to life in innocent delight,

With baleful doubt and harrowing distrust.

Why, if my father was the godly man

His gentle widow vouched with tender tears,

Did He to whom she bowed in daily prayer—

Who loved us, as she told me, with a love

Ineffable for strength and tenderness—

Permit such fate to him, such woe to us?

Ah! many a time, repeating on my knees

The simple language of my evening prayer

Which her dear lips had taught me, came the dark

Perplexing question, stirring in my heart

A sense of guilt, or quenching all my faith.

This, too, I kept a secret. I had died

Rather than breathe the question in her ears

Who knelt beside me. I had rather died

Than add a sorrow to the load she bore.

Taught to be true, I played the hypocrite

In truthfulness to her. I had no God,

Nor penitence, nor loyalty nor love;

For any being higher than herself.

Jealous of all to whom she gave her hand,

I clung to her with fond idolatry.

I sat with her; where'er she walked, I walked

I kissed away her tears; I strove to fill,

With strange precocity of manly pride

And more than boyish tenderness, the void

Which death had made.

I could not fail to see

That ruth for me and sorrow for her loss—

Twin leeches at her heart—were drinking blood

That, from her pallid features, day by day

Sank slowly down, to feed the cruel draught.

Nay, more than this I saw, and sadly worse.

Oft when I watched her and she knew it not,

I marked a quivering horror sweep her face—

A strange, quick thrill of pain—that brought her hand

With sudden pressure to her heart, and forced

To her white lips a swiftly whispered prayer.

I fancied that I read the mystery;

But it was deeper and more terrible

Than I conjectured. Not till darker years

Came the solution.

Still, we had some days

Of pleasure. Sorrow cannot always brood

Over the shivering forms that drink her warmth;

But springs to meet the morning light, and soars

Into the empyrean, to forget

For one sweet hour the ring of greedy mouths

That surely wait, and cry for her return.

My mother's hand in mine, or mine in hers,

We often left the village far behind,

And walked the meadow-paths to gather flowers,

And watch the plowman as he turned the tilth,

Or tossed his burnished share into the sun

At the long furrow's end, the while we marked

The tipsy bobolink, struggling with the chain

Of tinkling music that perplexed his wings,

And listened to the yellow-breasted lark's

Sweet whistle from the grass.

Glad in my joy,

My mother smiled amid these scenes and sounds,

And wandered on with gentle step and slow,

While I, in boyish frolic, ran before,

Chasing the butterflies, or in her path

Tossing the gaudy gold of buttercups,

Till sometimes, ere we knew, we stood entranced

Upon the river's marge.

Ever the spell

Of lapsing water tamed my playful mood,

And I reclined in silent happiness

At the tired feet that rested in the shade.

There through the long, bright mornings we remained,

Watching the noisy ferry-boat that plied

Like a slow shuttle through the sunny warp

Of threaded silver from a thousand brooks,

That took new beauty as it wound away;

Or gazing where at Holyoke's verdant base—

Like a slim hound, stretched at his master's feet—

Lay the long, lazy hamlet, Hockanum;

Or, upward turning, traced the line that climbed

O'er splintered rock and clustered foliage

To the bare mountain-top; then followed down

The scars of fire and storm, or paths of gloom

That marked the curtained gorges, till, at last,

Caught by a wisp of white, belated mist,

Our vision rose to trace its airy flight

Beyond the height, into the distant blue.

One morning, while we rested there, she told

Of a dear friend upon the other side—

A lady who had loved her—whom she loved—

And then she promised to my eager wish

That soon, across the stream I longed to pass,

I should go with her to the lady's home.

The wishedfor day came slowly—came at last—

My birthday morning—rounding to their close

The fourteen summers of my boyhood's life.

The early mists were clinging to the side

Of the dark mountain as we left the town,

Though all the roadside fields were quick with toil

In rhythmic motion through the dewy grass

The mowers swept, and on the fragrant air

Was borne from far the soft, metallic clash

Of stones upon the steel.

This was the day

"So memorably wonderful and sweet

Its power of inspiration lingers still,—

So full of her dear presence, so divine

With the melodious breathing of her words,

And the warm radiance of her loving smile,

That tears fall readily as April rain

At its recall." And with this day there came

The revelation and the genesis

Of a new life. In intellect and heart

I ceased to be a child, and grew a man.

By one long leap I passed the hidden bound

That circumscribed my boyhood, and thenceforth

Abjured all childish pleasure, and took on

The purpose and the burden of my life.

We crossed the river—I, as in a dream;

And when I stood upon the eastern shore,

In the full presence of the mountain pile,

Strange tides of feeling thrilled me, and I wept—

Wept, though I knew not why. I could have knelt

On the white sand, and prayed. Within my soul

Prophetic whispers breathed of coming power

And new possessions. Aspiration swelled

Like a pent stream within a narrow chasm,

That finds nor vent nor overflow, but swirls

And surges and retreats, until it floods

The springs that feed it. All was chaos wild,—

A chaos of fresh passion, undefined,

Deep in whose vortices of mist and fire

A new world waited blindly for its birth.

I had no words for revelation;—none

For answer, when my mother pressed my hand,

And questioned why it trembled. I looked up

With tearful eyes, and met her loving smile,

And both of us were silent, and passed on.

We reached at length the pleasant cottage-home

Where dwelt my mother's friend, and, at the gate,

Found her with warmest welcome waiting us.

She kissed my mother's cheek, and then kissed mine,

Which shrank, and mantled with a new-born shame.

They crossed the threshold: I remained without.

Surprised—half-angry—with the burning blush

That still o'erwhelmed my face.

I looked around

For something to divert my vexing thoughts,

And saw intently gazing in my eyes,

From his long tether in the grass, a lamb—

A lusty, downy, handsome, household pet.

There was a scarlet ribbon on his neck

Which held a silver bell, whose note I heard

First when his eye met mine; for then he sprang

To greet me with a joyous bleat, and fell,

Thrown by the cord that held him. Pitying him,

I loosed his cruel leashing, with intent,

After a half-hour's frolic, to return

And fasten as I found him; but my hand,

Too careless of its charge, slipped from its hold

With the first bound he made; and with a leap

He cleared the garden wall, and flew away.

Affrighted at my deed and its mischance,

I paused a moment—then with ready feet,

And first and final impulse, I pursued.

He held the pathway to the mountain woods,

The tinkle of his bell already faint

In the long distance he had placed between

Himself and his pursuer. On and on,

Climbing the mountain path, he sped away,

I following swiftly, never losing sight

Of the bright scarlet streaming from his neck,

Or hearing of the tinkle of his bell,

Till, wearied both, and panting up the steep,

Our progress slackened to a walk.

At length

He paused and looked at me, and waited till

My foot had touched the cord he dragged, and then

Bounded away, scaling the shelvy cliffs

That bolder rose along the narrow path.

He had no choice but mount. I pressed him close,

And rocks and chasms were thick on either side;

So, pausing oft, but ever leaping on

Before my hand could reach him, he advanced.

Not once in all the passage had I paused

To look below, nor had I thought of her

Whom I had left. Absorbed in the pursuit

I pressed it recklessly, until I grasped

My fleecy prisoner, wound and tied his cord

Around my wrist, and both of us sank down

Upon the mountain summit.

In a swoon

Of breathless weariness how long I lay

I could not know; but consciousness at last

Came by my brute companion, who, alert

Among the scanty browse, tugged at my wrist,

And brought me startled to my feet. I saw

In one swift sweep of vision where I stood,—

In presence of what beauty of the earth,

What glory of the sky, what majesty

Of lofty loneliness. I drew the lamb—

The dear, dumb creature—gently to my side,

And led him out upon the beetling cliff

That fronts the plaided meadows, and knelt down.

When once the shrinking, dizzy spell was gone,

I saw below me, like a jewelled cup,

The valley hollowed to its heaven-kissed lip—

The serrate green against the serrate blue—

Brimming with beauty's essence; palpitant

With a divine elixir—lucent floods

Poured from the golden chalice of the sun,

At which my spirit drank with conscious growth,

And drank again with still expanding scope

Of comprehension and of faculty.

I felt the bud of being in me burst

With full, unfolding petals to a rose,

And fragrant breath that flooded all the scene.

By sudden insight of myself I knew

That I was greater than the scene,—that deep

Within my nature was a wondrous world,

Broader than that I gazed on, and informed

With a diviner beauty,—that the things

I saw were but the types of those I held,

And that above them both, High Priest and King,

I stood supreme, to choose and to combine,

And build from that within me and without

New forms of life, with meaning of my own.

And there alone, upon the mountain-top,

Kneeling beside the lamb, I bowed my head

Beneath the chrismal light, and felt my soul

Baptized and set apart to poetry.

The spell of inspiration lingered not;

But ere it passed, I knew my destiny—

The passion and the portion of my life:

Though, with the new-born consciousness of power

And organizing and creative skill,

There came a sense of poverty—a sense

Of power untrained, of skill without resource,

Of ignorance of Nature and her laws

And language and the learning of the schools.

I could not rise upon my callow wings,

But felt that I must wait until the years

Should give them plumage, and the skill for flight

Be won by trial.

Then before me rose

The long, long years of study, interposed

Between me and the goal that shone afar;

But with them rose the courage to surmount,

And I was girt for toil.

Then, for the first,

My eye and spirit that had drunk the whole

Wide vision, grew discriminate, and traced

The crystal river pouring from the North

Its twinkling tide, and winding down the vale,

Till, doubling in a serpent coil, it paused

Before the chasm that parts the frontal spurs

Of Tom and Holyoke; then in wreathing light

Sped the swart rocks, and sought the misty South.

Across the meadows—carpet for the gods,

Woven of ripening rye and greening maize

And rosy clover-blooms, and spotted o'er

With the black shadows of the feathery elms—

Northampton rose, half hidden in her trees,

Lifted above the level of the fields,

And noiseless as a picture.

At my feet

The ferry-boat, diminished to a toy,

With automatic diligence conveyed

Its puppet passengers between the shores

That hemmed its enterprise; and one low barge,

With white, square sail, bore northward languidly

The slow and scanty commerce of the stream.

Eastward, upon another fertile stretch

Of meadow-sward and tilth, embowered in elms,

Lay the twin streets, and sprang the single spire

Of Hadley, where the hunted regicides

Securely lived of old, and strangely died;

And eastward still, upon the last green step

From which the Angel of the Morning Light

Leaps to the meadow-lands, fair Amherst sat,

Capped by her many-windowed colleges;

While from his outpost in the rising North,

Bald with the storms and ruddy with the suns

Of the long eons, stood old Sugarloaf,

Gazing with changeless brow upon a scene,

Changing to fairer beauty evermore.

Save of the river and my pleasant home,

I knew not then the names and history

Borne by these visions; but upon my brain

Their forms were graved in lines indelible

As, on the rocks beneath my feet, the prints

Of life in its first motion. Later years

Renewed the picture, and its outlines filled

With fair associations,—wrought the past

And living present into fadeless wreaths

That crowned each mound and mount, and town and tower,

The king of teeming memories. Nor could

I guess with faintest foresight of the life

Which, in the years before me, I should weave

Of mingled threads of pleasure and of pain

Into these scenes, until not one of all

Could meet my eye, or touch my memory,

Without recalling an experience

That drank the sweetest ichor of my veins

Or crowded them with joy.

At length I turned

From the wide survey, and with pleased surprise

Detected, nestling at the mountain's foot,

The cottage I had left; and, on the lawn,

Two forms of life that flitted to and fro.

I knew that they had missed me; so I sought

The passage I had climbed, and, with the lamb

Still fastened to my wrist, I hasted down.

Full of the marvels of the hour I sped,

Leaping from rock to rock, or flying swift

The smoother slopes, with arms half wings, and feet

That only guarded the descent, the while

My captive led me captive at his will.

So tense the strain of sinew, so intense

The mood and motion, that before I guessed,

The headlong flight was finished, and I walked,

Jaded and reeking, in the level path

That led the lambkin home.

My mother saw,

And ran to meet me: then for long, still hours,

Couched in a dim, cool room, I lay and slept.

When I awoke, I found her at my side,

Fanning my face, and ready with her smile

And soothing words to greet me. Then I told,

With youthful volubility and wild

Extravagance of figure and of phrase,

The morning's exploit.

First she questioned me

But, as I wrought each scene and circumstance

Into consistent form, she drank my words

In eager silence; and within her eyes

I saw the glow of pride which gravity

And show of deep concern could not disguise,

I read her bosom better than she knew.

I saw that she had made discovery

Of something unsuspected in her child,

And that, by one I loved, and she the best,

The fire that burned within me and the power

That morning called to life, were recognized.

When I had told my story, and had read

With kindling pride my praises in her eyes,

She placed her soft hand on my brow, and said:

"My Paul has climbed the noblest mountain height

In all his little world, and gazed on scenes

As beautiful as rest beneath the sun.

I trust he will remember all his life

That to his best achievement, and the spot

Nearest to heaven his youthful feet have trod,

He has been guided by a guileless lamb.

It is an omen which his mother's heart

Will treasure with her jewels."

When the sun

Of the long summer day hung but an hour

Above his setting, and the cool West Wind

Bore from the purpling hills his benison,

The farewell courtesies of love were given,

And we set forth for home.

Not far we fared—

The river left behind—when, looking back,

I saw the mountain in the searching light

Of the low sun. Surcharged with youthful pride

In my adventure, I can ne'er forget

The disappointment and chagrin which fell

Upon me; for a change had passed. The steep

Which in the morning sprang to kiss the sun,

Had left the scene; and in its place I saw

A shrunken pile, whose paths my steps had climbed.

Whose proudest height my humble feet had trod.

Its grand impossibilities and all

Its store of marvels and of mysteries

Were flown away, and would not be recalled.

The mountain's might had entered into me;

And, from that fruitful hour, whatever scene

Nature revealed to me, she never caught

My spirit humbled by surprise. My thought

Built higher mountains than I ever found;

Poured wilder cataracts than I ever saw;

Drove grander storms than ever swept the sky;

Pushed into loftier heavens and lower hells

Than the abysmal reach of light and dark;

And entertained me with diviner feasts

Than ever met the appetite of sense,

And poured me wine of choicer vintages

Than fire the hearts of kings.

The frolic-flame

Which in the morning kindled in my veins

Had died away; and at my mother's side

I walked in quiet mood, and gravely spoke

Of the great future. With a tender quest

My mother probed my secret wish, and heard,

With silence new and strange respectfulness,

The revelation of my plans. I felt

In her benign attention to my words;

In her suggestions, clothed with gracious phrase

To win my judgment; and in all those shades

Of mien and manner which a mother's love

Inspires so quickly when the form it nursed

Becomes a staff in its caressing hand,

She had made space for me, and placed her life

In new relations to my own. I knew

That she who through my span of tender years

Had counselled me, had given me privilege

Within her councils; and the moment came

I learned that in the converse of that hour,

The appetency of maternity

For manhood in its offspring, had laid hold

Of the fresh growth in me, and feasted well

Its gentle passion.

Ere we reached our home,

The plans for study were matured, and I,

Who, with an aptitude beyond my years,

Had gathered learning's humbler rudiments

From her to whom I owed my earliest words,

Was, when another day should rise, to pass

To rougher teaching, and society

Of the rude youth whose wild and boisterous ways

Had scared my childish life.

I nerved my heart

To meet the change; and all the troubled night

I tossed upon my pillow, filled with fears,

Or fired with hot ambitions; shrinking oft

With girlish sensitiveness from the lot

My manly heart had chosen; rising oft

Above my cowardice, well panoplied

By fancy to achieve great victories

O'er those whose fellows I should be.

At last,

The dawn looked in upon me, and I rose

To meet its golden coming, and the life

Of golden promise whose wide-open doors

Waited my feet.

The lingering morning hours

Seemed days of painful waiting, as they fell

In slowly filling numbers from the tower

Of the old village church; but when, at length,

My eager feet had touched the street, and turned

To climb the goodly eminence where he

In whose profound and stately pages live

His country's annals, ruled his youthful realm,

My heart grew stern and strong; and nevermore

Did doubt of excellence and mastery

Drag down my soaring courage, or disturb

My purposes and plans.

What boots it here

To tell with careful chronicle the life

Of my novitiate? Up the graded months

My feet rose slowly, but with steady step,

To tall and stalwart manliness of frame,

And ever rising and expanding reach

Of intellection and the power to call

Forth from the pregnant nothingness of words

The sphered creations of my chosen art.

What boots it to recount my victories

Over my fellows, or to tell how all,

Contemptuous at first, became at length

Confessed inferiors in every strife

When brain or brawn contended? Victories

Were won too easily to bring me pride,

And only bred contempt of the low pitch

And lower purpose of the power which strove

So feebly and so clumsily. When won,

They fed my mother's passion, and she praised;

And her delight was all the boon they brought.

My fierce ambition, ever reaching up

To higher fields and nobler combatants,

Trampled its triumphs underneath its feet;

And in my heart of hearts I pitied her

To whose deep hunger of maternal pride

They bore ambrosial ministry.

In all

These years of doing and development,

My heart was haunted by a bitter pain.

In every scene of pleasure, every hour

That lacked employment, every moment's lull

Of toil or study, its familiar hand

Was raised aloft, to smite me with its pang.

From month to month, from year to year, I saw

That she who bore me, and to whom I owed

The meek and loyal reverence of a child,

Was changing places with me, and that she—

Dependent, trustful and subordinate—

Deferred to me in all things, and in all

Gave me the parent's place and took the child's.

She waited for my coming like a child;

She ran to meet and greet me like a child;

She leaned on me for guidance and defence,

And lived in me, and by me, like a child.

If I were absent long beyond my wont,

She yielded to distresses and to tears;

And when I came, she flew into my arms

With childish impulse of delight, or chid

With weak complainings my delay.

By these,

And by a thousand other childish ways,

I knew disease was busy with her life,

Working distempers in her heart and brain,

And driving her for succor to my strength.

The change was great in her, though slowly wrought,—

Though wrought so slowly that my thought and life

Had been adjusted to it, but for this:—

One dismal night, a trivial accident

Had kept me from my home beyond the hour

At which my promise stood for my return.

Arriving at the garden gate, I paused

To catch a glimpse of the accustomed light,

Through the cold mist that wrapped me, but in vain.

Only one window glimmered through the gloom,

Through whose uncurtained panes I dimly saw

My mother in her chamber. She was clad

In the white robe of rest; but to and fro

She crossed the light, sometimes with hands pressed close

Upon her brow, sometimes raised up toward heaven,

As if in deprecation or despair;

And through the strident soughing of the elm

I heard her voice, still musical in woe,

Wailing and calling.

With a noiseless step

I reached the door, and, with a noiseless key,

Turned back the bolt, and stood within. I could

Have called her to my arms, and quelled her fears

By one dear word, and yet, I spoke it not.

I longed to learn her secret, and to know

In what recess of history or heart

It hid, and wrought her awful malady.

Not long I waited, when I heard her voice

Wail out again in wild, beseeching prayer,—

Her voice so sweet and soulful, that it seemed

As if a listening fiend could not refuse

Such help as in him lay, although her tongue

Should falter to articulate her pain.

I heard her voice—O God! I heard her words!

Not bolts of burning from the vengeful sky

Had scathed or stunned me more. I shook like one

Powerless within the toils of some great sin,

Or some o'ermastering passion; or like one

Whose veins turn ice at onset of the plague.

"O God," she said, "my Father and my Friend!

Spare him to me, and save me from myself!

O! if thou help me not—if thou forsake—

This hand which thou hast made, will take the life

Thou mad'st the hand to feed. I cling to him,

My son,—my boy. If danger come to him,

No one is left to save me from this crime.

Thou knowest, O! my God, how I have striven

To quench the awful impulse; how, in vain,

My prayers have gone before thee, for release

From the foul demon who would drive my soul

To crime that leaves no space for penitence.

O! Father! Father! Hear me when I call!

Hast thou not made me? Am I not thy child?

Why, why this mad, mysterious desire

To follow him I loved, by the dark door

Through which he forced his passage to the realm

That death throws wide to all? O why must I,

A poor, weak woman—"

I could hear no more,

But dropped my dripping cloak, and, with a voice,

Toned to its tenderest cadence, I pronounced

The sweet word, "mother!"

Her excess of joy

Burst in a cry, and in a moment's space

I sat within her room, and she, my child,

Was sobbing in my arms. I spoke no word,

But sat distracted with my tenderness

For her who threw herself upon my heart

In perfect trust, and bitter thoughts of Him

Whose succor, though importunately sought

In piteous pleadings by a gentle saint,

Was grudgingly withheld. Her closing words:

"O why must I, a poor, weak woman—" rang

Through every chamber of my tortured soul,

And called to conclave and rebellion all

The black-browed passions thitherto restrained.

Ay, why should she, who only sought for God,

Be given to a devil? Why should she

Who begged for bread be answered with a stone?

Ay, why should she whose soul recoiled from sin

As from a fiend, find in her heart a fiend

To urge the sin she hated?—questions all

The fiends within me answered as they would.

O God! O Father! How I hated thee!

Nay, how within my angry soul I dared

To curse thy sacred name!

Then other thoughts—

Thoughts of myself and of my destiny—

Succeeded. Who and what was I? A youth,

Doomed by hereditary taint to crime,

A youth whose every artery and vein

Was doubly charged with suicidal blood.

When the full consciousness of what I was

Possessed my thought, and I gazed down the abyss

God had prepared for me, I shrank aghast;

And there in silence, with an awful oath

I dare not write, I swore my will was mine,

And mine my hand; and that, though all the fiends

That cumber hell and overrun the earth

Should spur the deadly impulse of my blood,

And heaven withhold the aid I would not ask;

Though woes unnumbered should beset my life,

And reason fall, and uttermost despair

Hold me a hopeless prisoner in its glooms,

I would resist and conquer, and live out

My complement of years. My bosom burned

With fierce defiance, and the angry blood

Leaped from my heart, and boomed within my brain

With throbs that stunned me, though each fiery thrill

Was charged with tenderness for her whose head

Was pillowed on its riot.

Long I sat—

How long, I know not—but at last the sad,

Hysteric sobs and suspirations ceased,

Or only at wide intervals recurred;

And then I rose, and to her waiting bed

Led my doomed mother. With a cheerful voice—

Cheerful as I could summon—and a kiss,

I bade her a good night and pleasant dreams;

And then, across the hall, I sought my room

Where neither sleep nor dream awaited me,

But only blasphemous, black thoughts, and strife

With God and Destiny.

I saw it all:

The lamp that from my mother's window beamed,

Illumined other nights and other storms,

And by its lurid light revealed to me

The secrets of a life. Her sudden pangs,

Her brooding woes, her terrors when alone,

The strange surrender of her will to mine,

Her hunger for my presence, and her fear

That by some slip of fortune she should lose

Her hold on me, were followed to their home—

To her poor heart, that fluttered every hour

With conscious presence of an enemy

That would not be expelled, and strove to spill

The life it spoiled.

From that eventful night

She was not left alone. I called a friend,

A cheerful lady, whose companionship

Was music, medicine and rest; and she,

Wanting a home, and with a ready wit

Learning my mother's need and my desire,

Assumed the place of matron in the house;

And, in return for what we gave to her,

Gave us herself.

My mother's confidence,

By her self-confidence, she quickly won;

And thus, though sadly burdened at my heart,

I found one burden lifted from my hands.

More liberty of movement and of toil

I needed; for the time was drawing near

When I should turn my feet toward other halls,

To seek maturer study, and complete

The work of culture faithfully begun.

Into my mother's ear I breathed my plans

With careful words. The university

Was but a short remove—a morning's walk—

Away from her; and ever at her wish—

Nay, always when I could—I would return;

And separation would but sweeten love,

And joy of meeting recompense the pain

Of parting and of absence.

She was calm

And leaning in her thought upon her friend.

Gave her consent. So, on a summer day,

I kissed her faded cheek, and turned from home

To seek the college halls that I had seen

From boyhood's mount of vision.

Of the years

Passed there in study—of the rivalries,

The long, stern struggles for pre-eminence,

The triumphs hardly won, but won at last

Beyond all cavil, matters not to tell.

It was my grief that while I gained and grew,

My mother languished momently, and lost,—

A grief that turned to poison in my blood.

The college prayers were mummeries to me,

And with disdainful passion I repelled

All Christian questionings of heart and life,

By old and young.

I stood, I moved alone.

I sought no favors, took no courtesies

With grateful grace, and nursed my haughty pride.

The men who kneeled and gloomed, and prayed and sang,

Seemed but a brood of dullards, whom contempt

Would honor overmuch. No tender spot

Was left within my indurated heart,

Save that which moved with ever-melting ruth

For her whose breast had nursed me, and whose love

Had given my life the only happiness

It yet had known.

With her I kept my pledge

With more than faithful punctuality.

Few weeks passed by in all those busy years

In which I did not walk the way between

The college and my home, and bear to her

Such consolation as my presence gave.

In truth, my form was as familiar grown

To all the rustic dwellers on the road

As I had been a post-boy.

Little joy

These visits won for me—little beyond

That which I found in bearing joy to her—

For every year marked on her slender frames

And on her cheeks, and on her failing brain,

Its record of decadence. I could see

That she was sinking into helplessness,

And that too soon her inoffensive soul,

With all its sweet affections, would go down

To hopeless wreck and darkness.

From her friend

I learned that still the burden of her prayer

Was, that she might be saved from one great sin—

The sin of self-destruction. Every hour

This one petition struggled from her heart,

To reach the ear of heaven; yet never help

Came down in answer to her cry.

The Spring

That ushered in my closing college-year

Came up the valley on her balmy wings,

And Winter fled away, and left no trace,

Save, here and there a snowy drift, to show

Where his cold feet had rested in their flight.

But one still night, within the span of sleep,

A shivering winter cloud that wandered late

Shook to the frosty ground its inch of rime.

So, when the morning rose, the earth was white;

And shrubs and trees, and roofs and rocks and walls,

Fulgent with downy crystals, made a world

To which a breath were ruin; and a breath

Wrecked it for me, and, by a few sad words,

Blotted the sunlit splendor from my sight.

As I looked out upon the scene, and mused

Of her to whom I hoped it might impart

Some healthy touch of joy, I heard the beat

Of hoofs upon the trackless blank, and saw

A horseman speeding up the avenue.

I raised my sash (I knew he came for me),

And faltered forth my question. From his breast

He drew a folded slip: dismounting then,

He stooped and pressed the missive in a mass

Of clinging snow, and tossed it to my hand.

I closed the window, burst the frosty seal,

And read: "Your mother cannot long survive:

Come home to her to-day." I did not pause

To break the fast of night, but rushing forth,

I followed close the messenger's return.

It was a morning, such as comes but once

In all the Spring,—so still and beautiful,

So full of promise, so exhilarant

With frost and fire, in earth and air, that life

Had been a brimming joy but for the scene

That waited for my eyes—the scene of death—

From which imagination staggered back,

And every sensibility recoiled.

The smoke from distant sugar-camps rolled up

Through the still ether in columnar coils—

Blue pillars of a bluer dome—and all

The resonant air was full of sounds of Spring.

The sheep were bleating round their empty ricks;

Horses let loose were calling from afar,

And winning fierce replies; the axeman's blows

Fell nimbly at the piles which wintry woods

Had lent to summer stores; while far and faint,

The rhythmic ululations of the hound

On a fresh trail, upon the mountain's side,

Added their strange wild music to the morn.

The beauty and the music caught my sense,

But woke within my sick and sinking heart

No motion of response. I walked as one

Condemned to dungeon-glooms might walk

Through shouts of mirth and festal pageantry,

Hearing and seeing all, yet over all

Hearing the clank of chains and clash of bars,

And seeing but the reptiles of his cell.

How I arrived at home, without fatigue,

Without a thought of effort—onward borne

By one absorbing and impelling thought—

As one within a minute's mete may slide,

O'er leagues of sunny dreamland in a dream,

By magic or by miracle—I found

No time to question.

At my mother's door

I stood and listened: soon I heard my name

Pronounced within in spiteful whisperings.

I raised the latch, and met her burning eyes.

She stared a wild, mad stare, then raised herself,

And in weak fury poured upon my head

The vials of her wrath. I stood like stone,

Without the power to speak, the while she rained

Her maledictions on me, and in words

Fit only for the damned, accused my life

Of crimes my language could not name, and deeds

Which only outcast wretches know.

At length,

I gained my tongue, and tried to take her hand;

But with a shriek which cut me like a knife

She shrank from me, and hid her quivering face

Within her pillow.

Then I turned away,

And sought the room where oft in better days

We both had knelt together at my bed,

And, making fast my door, I threw myself

Prone on the precious couch, and gave to grief

My strong and stormy nature. All the day

With bursts of passion I bewailed my loss,

Or lay benumbed in feeling and in thought,

Tasting no food, and shutting out my soul

From all approach of human sympathy,

Till the light waned, and through the leafless boughs

Of the old elm I caught the sheen of stars.

Then sleep descended—such a sleep as comes

To uttermost exhaustion,—sleep with dreams

Wild as the waking fantasies of her

Whose screams and incoherent words gave voice

To all their phantom brood.

At length I woke.

The house was still as death; and yet I heard,

Or thought I heard, the touch of crafty feet

Upon the carpet, creeping by my door.

It passed away, away; and then a pause,

Still and presageful as the breathless calm

On which the storm-cloud mounts the pallid West,

Succeeded. I could hear the parlor-clock

Counting the beaded silence, and my bed,

Rustling beneath my breathing and my pulse,

Was sharply crepitant, and gave me pain.

An hour passed by (it loitered like an age),

And then came hurried words and hasty fall

Of footsteps in the passage. I could hear

Screams, sobs, and whispered calls and closing doors

And heavy feet that jarred my bed, and shook

The windows of my room. I did not stir:

I dared not stir, but lay in deathly dread,

Waiting the sad denouement. Soon it came.

A man approached my door, and tried the latch;

Then knocked, and called. I knew the kindly voice

Of the physician, and threw back the bolt.

Then by the light he held before his face

I read the fact of death.

I took his arm,

And, as I feebly staggered down the stairs,

He broke to me with lack of useless words

The awful truth.... The old familiar tale:

She counterfeited sleep: the nurses both,

Weary with over-watching in their chairs,

Under the cumbrous stillness, slept indeed;

And when she knew it, she escaped; and then

She did the deed to which for many years

She had been predisposed. Perhaps I knew

The nature of the case: perhaps I knew

My father went that way. I clutched his arm:

There was no need of words.

The parlor door

Stood open, and a throng of silent friends,

Choking with tears, gazed on a silent form

Shrouded in snowy linen. They made way

For me and my companion. On my knees

I clasped the precious clay, and pouring forth

My pitying love and tenderness for her,

I gave indignant voice to my complaint

Against the Being who, to all her prayers

For succor and security, had turned

A deaf, dead ear and a repelling hand.

To what blaspheming utterance I gave

My raving passion, may the God I cursed

Forbid my shrinking memory to recall!

I now remember only that when drawn

By strong, determined hands away from her,

The room was vacant. Every pitying friend

Had flown my presence and the room, to find

Release of sensibility from words

That roused their superstitious souls to fear

That God would smite me through the blinding smoke

Of my great torment.

Silence, for the rest!

It was a dream; and only as a dream

Do I remember it: the coffined form,

The funeral—a concourse of the town—

The trembling prayer for me, the choking sobs,

The long procession, the descending clods,

The slow return, articulated all

With wild, mad words of mine, and gentle speech

Of those who sought to curb or comfort me—

All was a dream, from which I woke at length

With heart as dead as hers who slept. The heavens

Were brass above me, and the breathing world

Was void and meaningless. When told to pray,

This was the logic of my heart's reply:

If God be Love, not such is He to me

Nor such to mine. If He heard not the voice

Of such a lovely saint as she I mourned,

Mine would but rouse His vengeance.

So I closed

With Reason's hand the adamantine doors

Which only Faith unlocks, and shut my soul

Away from God, the warder of a gang

Of passions that in darkness stormed or gloomed

And with each other fought, or on themselves

Gnawed for the nourishment which I denied.

COMPLAINT.

River, sparkling river, I have fault to find with thee

River, thou dost never give a word of peace to me!

Dimpling to each touch of sunshine, wimpling to each air that blows,

Thou dost make no sweet replying to my sighing for repose.

Flowers of mount and meadow, I have fault to find with you;

So the breezes cross and toss you, so your cups are filled with dew,

Matters not though sighs give motion to the ocean of your breath;

Matters not though you are filling with the chilling drops of death!

Birds of song and beauty, lo! I charge you all with blame:—

Though all hapless passions thrill and fill me, you are still the same.

I can borrow for my sorrow nothing that avails

From your lonely note, that only speaks of joy that never fails.

O! indifference of Nature to the fact of human pain!

Every grief that seeks relief entreats it at her hand in vain;

Not a bird speaks forth its passion, not a river seeks the sea,

Nor a flower from wreaths of Summer breathes in sympathy with me.

O! the rigid rock is frigid, though its bed be summer mould,

And the diamond glitters ever in the grasp of changeless gold;

And the laws that bring the seasons swing their cycles as they must,

Though the ample road they trample blind the eyes with human dust.

Moons will wax in argent glory, though man wane to hopeless gloom;

Stars will sparkle in their splendor, though he darkle to his doom;

Winds of heaven he calls to fan him ban him with an icy chill,

And the shifting crowds of clouds go drifting o'er him as they will.

Yet within my inmost spirit I can hear an undertone,

That by law of prime relation holds these voices as its own,—

The full tonic whose harmonic grandeurs rise through Nature's words,

From the ocean's thundrous rolling to the trolling of the birds.

Spirit, O! my spirit! Is it thou art out of tune?

Art thou clinging to December while the earth is in its June?

Hast thou dropped thy part in nature? Hast thou touched another key?

Art thou angry that the anthem will not, cannot, wait for thee?

Spirit, thou art left alone—alone on waters wild;

For God is gone, and Love is dead, and Nature spurns her child.

Thou art drifting in a deluge, waves below and clouds above,

And with weary wings come back to thee, thy raven and thy dove.

PART II.

LOVE.

As from a deep, dead sea, by drastic lift

Of pent volcanic fires, the dripping form

Of a new island swells to meet the air,

And, after months of idle basking, feels

The prickly feet of life from countless germs

Creeping along its sides, and reaching up

In fern and flower to the life-giving sun,

So from my grief I rose, and so at length

I felt new life returning: so I felt

The life already wakened stretching forth

To stronger light and purer atmosphere.

But most I longed for human love—the source

(So sadly closed), from which my life had drawn

Its sweetest inspiration and reward.

I could not pray, nor could my spirit win

From sights and sounds of nature the response

It vaguely yearned for. They assailed my sense

With senseless seeming of the hum and whirl

Of vast machinery, whose motive power

Sought its own ends, or wrought for ministry

To other life than mine.

I could stand still,

And see the trains sweep by; could hear the roar

Of thundering wheels; could watch the pearly plumes

That floated where they flew; could catch a glimpse

Of thousand happy faces at the glass;

But felt that all their freighted life and wealth

Were nought to me, and moved toward other souls

In other latitudes.

A year had flown,

And more, when, on a Sunday morn in June,

I wandered out, to wear away the hours

Of growing restlessness. The worshippers

Were thronging to the service of the day,

And gave me sidelong stare, or shunned me quite;

As if they knew me for a reprobate,

And feared a taint of death.

I took the road

That eastward cleft the town, and sought the bridge

That spanned the river, reaching which I crossed.

Then deep within the stripes of springing corn

I found the shadow of an elm, and lay

Stretched on the downy grass for listless hours,

Dreaming of days gone by, or turning o'er

With careless hand the pages of a book

I had brought with me.

Tired at length I rose,

And, touched by some light impulse, moved along

The old, familiar road. I loitered on

In a blind reverie, nor marked the while

The furlongs or the time, until the spell

In a full burst of music was dissolved.

I startled as one startles from a dream,

And saw the church of Hadley, from whose doors,

Open to summer air, the choral hymn

Poured out its measured tides, and rose and fell

Upon the silence in broad cadences,

As from a far, careering sea, the waves

Lift into silver swells the sleeping breasts

Of land-locked bays.

I heard the sound of flutes

And hoarse, sonorous viols, in accord

With happy human voices,—and one voice—

A woman's or an angel's—that compelled

My feet to swift approach. A thread of gold,

Through all the web of sound, I followed it

Till, by the stress of some strange sympathy,

And by no act of will, I joined my voice

To that one voice of melody, and sang.

The heart is wiser than the intellect,

And works with swifter hands and surer feet

Toward wise conclusions. So, without resort

To reason, in my heart I knew that she

Who sang had suffered—knew that she had grieved,

Had hungered, struggled, kissed the cheek of death,

And ranged the scale of passions till her soul

Was deep, and wide, and soft with sympathy;—

Nay, more than this: that she had found at last

Peace like a river, on whose waveless tide

She floated while she sang. This was the key

That loosed my prisoned voice, and filled my eyes

With tender tears, and touched to life again

My better nature.

When the choral closed,

And the last chord in silence lapsed away,

I raised my eyes, and, nodding to the beck

Of the old, slippered sexton, I went in,—

Not (shall it be confessed?) to find the God

At whose plain altar bowed the rural throng;

But, through a voice, to follow to its source

The influence that moved me.

I was late;

And many eyes looked up as I advanced

Through the broad aisle, and took a seat that turned

My face to all the faces in the house.

I scanned the simpering girls within the choir,

But found not what I sought; and then my eyes

With rambling inquisition swept the pews,

Pausing at every maiden face in vain.

One head, that crowned a tall and slender form,

Was bowed with reverent grace upon the rail

Before her; and, although I caught no glimpse

Of her sweet face, I knew such face was there,

And there the voice.

It was Communion Day.

The simple table underneath the desk

Was draped with linen, on whose snow was spread

The feast of love—the vases filled with wine,

The separated bread and circling cups.

The venerable pastor had come down

From his high pulpit, and assumed the seat

Of presidence, and, with benignant eyes,

Sat smiling on his flock. The deacons all

Rose from their pews—four old, brown-handed men

With frosty hair—and took the ancient chairs

That flanked the table. All the house was still

Save here and there the rustle of a silk

Or folding of a fan; and over all

Brooded the dove of peace. I had no part

In the fair spectacle, but I could feel

That it was beautiful and sweet as heaven.

When the old pastor rose, with solemn mien,

I looked to see the lady lift her head;

But still she bowed; and then I heard these words;

"The person who unites with us to-day

Will take her place before me in the aisle,

To give her answer to our creed, and speak

The pledges of our covenant."

Then first

I saw her face. With modest grace she rose,

Lifted her hat, and gave it to the hand

Of a companion, and within the aisle

Stood out alone. My heart beat thick and fast

With vision of her perfect loveliness,

And apprehension of the heroism

That shone within her eyes, and made her act

A Christ-like sacrifice.

O! eyes of blue!

O! lily throat and cheeks of faintest rose!

O! brow serene, enthroned in holy thought!

O! soft, brown sweeps of hair! O! shapely grace

Of maidenhood, enrobed in virgin white!

Why, in your rapt unconsciousness of me

And all around you—in the presence-hall

Of God and angels—at the marriage-feast

Of Jesus and his chosen—did my eyes

Profane the hour with other feast than yours?

I heard the "You Believe" of the old creed

Of puritan New England; and I heard

The old "You Promise" of its covenant.

Her bow of reverent assent to all

The knotty dogmas, and her silent pledge

Of faithfulness and fellowship, I saw.

These formularies were the frame of oak—

Gnarled, strongly carved, and swart with age and use—

Which held the lovely picture of my saint,

And showed her saintliness and beauty well.

At close of the recital and response,

The pastor raised the plain, baptismal bowl,

And she, the maiden devotee, advanced

And knelt before him. Lifting then her eyes

To him and heaven, with look of earnest faith

And perfect consecration, she received

Upon her brow the water from his hand.

The trickling chrism shone on her cheeks like tears,

The while he joined her lovely name with God's:

"KATHRINA, I BAPTIZE THEE IN THE NAME

OF FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST, AMEN!"

Still kneeling like a saint before a shrine,

She closed her eyes. Then lifting up toward heaven

His hands, the pastor prayed,—prayed that her soul

Might be forever kept from stain and sin;

That Christ might live in her, and through her life

Shine into other souls; might give her strength

To master all temptation, and to keep

The vows that day assumed; might comfort her

In every sorrow, and, in death's dread hour,

Bear her in hopeful triumph to the rest

Prepared for those who love him.

All this scene

I saw through blinding tears. The poetry

That like a soft aureola embraced

Within its cope those two contrasted forms;

The eager observation and the hush

That reigned through all the house; the breathless spell

Of sweet solemnity and tender awe

Which held all hearts, when she, The Beautiful,

Received the sign of marriage to The Good,

O'erwhelmed me, and I wept. Shall I confess

That in the struggle to repress my tears

And hold my swelling heart, I grudged her gift,

And felt that, by the measure she had risen,

She had put space between herself and me,

And quenched my hope?

She stood while courtesy

Of formal Christian welcome was bestowed;

Then straightway sought her seat, as though no eyes

But those of One unseen observed her steps.

I saw her taste the sacramental bread,

And touch the silver chalice to her lips;

And while she thought of Him, The Spotless One

Whose flesh and blood were symboled to her heart,

And worshipped in her thought, I ate and drank

Her virgin beauty—with what guilty sense

Of profanation!

Last, the closing hymn

Gave me her voice again; and this I drank;

Nay, this invaded and pervaded me.

Its subtile search found out the sleeping chords

Of sympathy; and on the bridge of sound

It built between our souls, I crossed, and saw

Into the depths of purity and love—

The full, pathetic power of womanhood—

From which the structure sprang. Just once

I caught her eyes. She blushed with consciousness

Of my strong gaze; but paused not in her hymn

Till she had given to every word the wings

That bore it, like a singing bird, toward heaven.

The benediction fell; and then the throng

Passed slowly out. I was the last to go.

I saw a man whom I had known, and shrank

Both from his greetings and his questionings.

One thing I learned: that she who thus had joined

This cluster of disciples was not born

And reared among their number: that was plain.

I saw it in her bearing and her dress;

In that unconsciousness of self that comes

Of gentle breeding, and society

Of gentle men and women; in the ease

With which she bore the awkward deference

Of those who spoke with her adown the aisle;

In distant and admiring gaze of men,

And the cold scrutiny of village girls

Who passed for belles.

I stood upon the steps—

The last who left the door—and there I found

The lady and her friend. The elder turned,

And with a cordial greeting took my hand,

And rallied me on my forgetfulness.

Her eyes, her smile, her manner and her voice

Touched the quick springs of memory, and I spoke

Her name.

She was my mother's early friend,

Whose face I had not seen in all the years

That had flown over us, since, from her door,

I chased her lamb to where I found—myself.

She spoke with tender words and swimming eyes

Of her I mourned, and questioned me like one

Who felt a mother's anxious interest

In all my cares and plans. Why did I not

In all my maunderings and wanderings

Remember I had friends, and visit them—

Not missing her? Her niece was with her now;

Would live with her, perhaps—("a lovely girl!"—

In whisper); and they both would so much like

To see me at their house! (whisper again:

"Poor child! I fear it is but dull for her,

Here in the country.") Then with sudden thought—

"Kathrina!"

With a blushing smile she turned

(She had heard every word), and then her aunt—

Her voluble, dear aunt—presented me

As an old friend—the son of an old friend—

Whose eyes had promised he would visit them,

Although, in her monopoly of speech,

She had quite shut him from the chance to say

So much as that.

I caught the period

Quick as it dropped, and spoke the happiness

I had in meeting them, and gave the pledge—

No costly thing to give—to end my walks

On pleasant nightfalls at the little house

Under the mountain.

I had spoken more,

But then the carriage, with its single horse,

For which they waited, rattled to the steps,

And we descended. To their lofty seats

I helped the pair, and in my own I held

For one sweet moment, hand of all the hands

In the wide world I longed to clasp the most.

A courteous "Good Evening, Sir," was all I won

From its possessor; but her lively aunt

With playful menace shook her fan at me,

And said: "Remember, Paul!" and rode away.

"A worldly woman, Sir!" growled a grum throat,

I turned, and saw the sexton. Query: "which?"

"I mean the aunt." ... "And what about the niece?"

"Too fine for common people!" (with a shrug).

"I think she is," I said, with quiet voice,

And turned my feet toward home.

A pious girl!

And what could I be to a pious girl?

What could she be to me? Weak questions, these:

And vain perhaps; but such as young men ask

On slighter spur than mine.

She had bestowed

Her love, her life, her goodly self on heaven,

And had been nobly earnest in her gift.

Before all lovers she had chosen Christ;

Before all idols, God; before all wish

And will of loving man, her heart and hand

Were pledged to duty. Could she be a wife?

Could she be mine, with such unstinted wealth

Of love, and love's devotion, as I craved?

Would she not leave me for a Sunday School

Before the first moon's wane? Would she not seek

The cant and snuffle of conventicles

"At early candle-light," and sing her hymns

To drivelling boors, and cheat me of her songs?

Would she exhaust herself in "doing good"

After the modern styles—in patching quilts,

And knitting socks, and bearing feeble tracts

To dirty little children—not to speak

Of larger work for missionary folk?

Would there not come a time (O! fateful time!)

When Dorcas and her host would fill my house,

And I by courtesy be held at home

To entertain their twaddle, and to smile,

While in God's name and lovely Charity's

They would consume my substance? Would she not

Become the stern and stately president

Of some society, or figure in the list

Of slim directresses in spectacles?

So much for questions: then reflections came.

These pious women make more careful wives

Than giddy ones. They do not run away,

Though, doubtless, husbands live whose hearts would heal,

Broken by such a blow! The time they give

To worship and to pious offices

Defrauds the mirror mainly; and the gold

That goes for charity goes not for gems.

Besides, these pious and believing wives

Make gentle mothers, who, with self-control

And patient firmness, train their children well—

A fact to be remembered. But, alas!

They train their husbands too, and undertake

A mission to their souls, so gently pushed,

So tenderly, they may not take offence,

Or punish with rebuff; and yet, dear hearts!

With such persistence, that they reach the raw

Before they know it: so it comes to tears

At last, with comfort in an upper room.

But then—a seal is sacred to them, and a purse

Or pocket-book, though in a dressing-room

With shutters and a key!

Thus wrapped in thought

And selfish calculation of the claims

Of one my peer, or my superior,

In every personal and moral grace,

I walked along, till, on my consciousness,

Flashed the absurdity of my conceits

And my assumptions, and I laughed outright—

Laughed at myself, so loudly and so long

That I was startled. Not for many months

Had sound of mirth escaped me; and my voice

Rang strangely in my ears, as if the lips

Of one long dead had spoken.

I received

The token of returning healthfulness

With warm self-gratulation. I had touched

The magic hand that held new life for me:

The cloud was lifted, and the burden gone.

The leaf within my book of fate, that gloomed

With awful records, washed and blotched by tears—

Blown by a woman's breath from finger-tip's

They knew not what they did—was folded back;

And all the next white page held but one word,

One word of gold and flame—its title-crown—

That wrought a rosy nimbus for itself;

And that one word was LOVE.

The laggard days

My pride or my propriety imposed

Upon desire, before my eyes could see

The object of my new-born passion, passed;

And in the low hours of an afternoon.

Bright with the largess of kingly shower

Whose chariot-wheels still thundered in the East,

Leaving the West aflame, I sought the meads,

And once again, thrilled by foretasted joy,

Walked toward the mountain.

While I walked, the rain

Fell like a veil of gauze between my eyes

And the blue wall; and from the precious spot

That held the object of my thought, there sprang

An iridal effulgence, faint at first,

But brightening fast, and leaping to an arch

That spanned the heavens—a miracle of light!

"There's treasure where the rainbow rests," I said.

Would it evade me, as, for years untold,

It had evaded every childish dupe

Whose feet had chased the bright, elusive cheat?

Would it evade me? Question that arose,

And loomed with darker front and huger form

Than the dark mountain, and more darkly loomed

And higher rose as the long path grew short!

Would it evade me? Like a passing smile

The rainbow faded from the mountain's face;

And Hope's resplendent iris, which illumed

My question, grew phantasmal, and at length

Evanished, leaving but a doubtful blur.

Would it evade me? Gods! what wealth or waste

Of precious life awaited the reply!

Was it a coward's shudder that o'erswept

My frame at thought of possible repulse

And possible relapse?

"Oh! there he comes!"

I heard the mistress of the cottage say

Behind a honeysuckle. Did I smile?

It was because the fancy crossed me then

That the announcement was like one which rings

Over the polar seas, when, from his perch,

The lookout bruits a long-expected whale!

Then sweeping the piazza from the spot

Where with her niece she sat, she hailed me with:

"So, you are come at last! How very sad

These men have so much business! Tell me how

You got away; how soon you must return;

Who suffers by your absence; what the news,

And whether you are well."

Brisk medicine

These words to me, and timely given. They broke

The spell of fear, and banished my restraint.

She took my arm, and led me to her niece,

Who greeted me as if some special grace

Of courtesy were due, to make amends

For the familiar badinage her aunt

Had poured upon me.

They had come without—

One with her work, the other with her book—

To taste the freshness of the evening air,

Washed of the hot day's dust by rain; to hear

The robin's hymn of joy; and watch the clouds

That canopied with gold the sinking sun.

The maiden in a pale-blue, muslin robe—

Dyed with forget-me-nots, I fancied then,

And sweet with life in every fold, I knew—

A blush-rose at her throat, and in her hair

A sprig of green and white, was lovelier

Than sky or landscape; and her low words fell

More musically than the robin's hymn.

So, with my back to other scene and sound,

I faced the faces, took the proffered chair

And looked and listened.

"Tell us of yourself,"

Spoke the blunt aunt, with license of her years.

"What are you doing now?"

"Nothing," I said.

"And were you not the boy who was to grow

Into a great, good man, and write fine books,

And have no end of fame?"

The question cut

Deeper than she intended. The hot blush

And stammering answer told her of the hurt,

And tenderly she tried to heal the wound:

"I know that you have suffered; but your hours

Must not be told by tears. The life that goes

In unavailing sorrow goes to waste."

"True," I replied, "but work may not be done

Without a motive. Never worthy man

Worked worthily who was not moved by love.

When she I loved, and she who loved me died,

My motive died; and it can never rise

Till trump of love shall call it from the dust

To resurrection."

I spoke earnestly,

Without a thought that other ears than hers

Were listening to my words; but when I looked,

I saw the maiden's eyes were dim with tears.

I knew her own experience was touched,

And that her heart made answer to my own

In perfect sympathy.

To change the drift,

I took her book, and read the title-page:

"So you like poetry," I said.

"So well my aunt

Finds fault with me."

"You write, perhaps?"

"Not I."

"A happy woman!" I exclaimed; "in truth,

The first I ever found affecting art

Who shunned expression by it. If a girl

Like painting, she must paint; if poetry,

She must write verses. Can you tell me why

(For sex marks no distinction in this thing).

Men with a taste for art in finest forms

Cherish the fancy that they may become,

Or are, Art's masters? You shall see a man

Who never drew a line or struck an arc

Direct an architect, and spoil his work,

Because, forsooth! he likes a tasteful house!

He likes a muffin, but he does not go

Into his kitchen to instruct his cook,—

Nay, that were insult. He admires fine clothes,

But trusts his tailor. Only in those arts

Which issue from creative potencies

Does his conceit engage him. He could learn

The baker's trade, and learn to cut a coat,

But never learn to do that one great deed

Which he essays."

"'Tis not a strange mistake—

These people make"—she answered, thoughtfully.

"Art gives them pleasure; and they honor those

Whose heads and hands produce it. If they see

The length and breadth and beauty of a thought

Embodied by another,—if they hold

The taste, the culture, the capacity,

To measure values in the things of art,

Why cannot they create? Why cannot they

Win to themselves the honor they bestow

On those who feed them? Is it very strange

That those who know how sweet the gratitude

Which the true artist stirs, should burn to taste

That gratitude themselves?"

"Not strange, perhaps,"

I said, "and yet, it is a sad mistake;

For countless noble lives have gone to waste

In work which it inspired."

Here spoke the aunt:

"You are a precious pair; and if you know

What you are talking of, you know a deal

More than your elders. By your royal leave,

I will retire; for I can lay the cloth

For kings and queens though I may fail to know

Their lore and language. You can eat, I think;

And hear a tea-bell, though you hear not me."

Thus speaking, in her crisp, good-natured way,

The lady left us.

When she passed the door,

And laughter at her jest had had its way,

I said: "It takes all sorts to make a world."

"How many, think you? Only one, two, three,"

The maiden said. "Here we have all the world

In this one cottage—artist, teacher, taught,

In—not to mar the order of the scale

For courtesy—yourself, myself, my aunt.

You are an artist, so my aunt reports;

But, as an artist, you are nought to her.

And now, to broach a petted theory,

Let me presume too boldly, while I say

She cannot understand you, though I can;

You cannot measure her, though she is wise.

You have not much for her, and that you have

You cannot teach her; but I, knowing her,

Can pick from your creations crumbs of thought

She will find manna. In the hands of Christ

The five loaves grew, the fishes multiplied;

And he to his disciples gave the feast—

They to the multitude. Artists are few,

Teachers are thousands, and the world is large.

Artists are nearest God. Into their souls

He breathes his life, and from their hands it comes

In fair, articulate forms to bless the world;

And yet, these forms may never bless the world

Except its teachers take them in their hands,

And give each man his portion."

As she spoke

In earnest eloquence, I could have knelt,

And worshipped her. Her delicate cheek was flushed,

Her eyes were filled with light, and her closed book

Was pressed against her heart, whose throbbing tide

Thridded her temples. I was half amused,

Half rapt in admiration; and she saw

That in my eyes at which she blushed and paused.

"Your pardon, Sir," she said. "It ill becomes

A teacher to instruct an artist."

"Nay,

It does become you wondrously," I said

With light but earnest words. "Pray you go on;

And pardon all that my unconscious eyes

Have done to stop you."

"I have little more

That I would care to say: you have my thought,"

She answered; "yet there's very much to say,

And you should say it."

"Not I, lady, no:

A poet is not practical like you,

Nor sensible like you. You can teach him

As well as tamer folk. In truth, I think

He needs instruction quite as much as they

For whom he writes."

"That's possible," she said

With an arch smile.

"Will you explain yourself?"

"Well—if you wish it—yes:" she made reply.

"And first, my auditor must know that I

Relieve in inspiration, though he knows

So much as that already, from my words,—

Believe that God inspires the poet's soul,—

That he gives eyes to see, and ears to hear

What in his realm holds finest ministry

For highest aptitudes and needs of men,

And skill to mould it into forms of art

Which shall present it to the world he serves.

Sometimes the poet writes with fire; with blood

Sometimes; sometimes with blackest ink:

It matters not. God finds his mighty way

Into his verse. The dimmest window-panes

Let in the morning light, and in that light

Our faces shine with kindled sense of God

And his unwearied goodness; but the glass

Gets little good of it; nay, it retains

Its chill and grime beyond the power of light

To warm or whiten. E'en the prophet's ass

Had better eyes than he who strode his back,

And, though the prophet bore the word of God,

Did finer reverence. The Psalmist's soul

Was not a fitting place for psalms like his

To dwell in over-long, while waiting words,

If I read rightly. As for the old seers,

Whose eyes God touched with vision of the life

Of the unfolding ages, I must doubt

Whether they comprehended what they saw,

Or knew what they recorded. It remains

For the world's teachers to expound their words;

To probe their mysteries; and relegate

The truth they hold in blind significance

Into the fair domains of history

And human knowledge. Am I understood?"

"You are," I answered; "and I cannot say

You flatter me. God takes within his hand

A thing of his contrivance which we call

A poet: then he puts it to his lips,

And speaks his word, and puts it down again—

The instrument not better and not worse

For being handled;—not improved a whit

In quality, by quality of that

Which it conveys. Do I report aright?

Or do you prompt me?"

"You are very apt,"

She said, "at learning, but a little bald

In statement. Nathless, be it as you say;

And we shall see how it is possible

That poets need instruction quite as much

As those for whom they write. What sad, bad men

The brightest geniuses have been! How weak,

How mean in character! how foul in life!

How feebly have the best of them retained

The wealth of good and beauty which has flowed

In crystal streams from God, the fountain head,

Through them to fertilize the world! Nay, worse,

How many of them have infused the tide

With tincture of their own impurity,

To poison sweetest, unsuspecting lips,

And breed diseases in the finest blood!

And poets not alone, and not the worst;

But painters, sculptors—those whose kingly power

And aptitude for utterance divine

Have made them artists:—how have these contemned

In countless instances the God of Heaven

Who filled them with his fire! Think you that these

Could compass their achievements of themselves?

Can streams surpass their fountains?"

"Nay," I said,

In quick response, "Your argument is good;

But is the artist nothing? Is he nought

But an apt tool—a mouth-piece for a voice?

You make him but the spigot of a cask

Round which you, teachers, wait with silver cups

To bear away the wine that leaves it dry.

You magnify your office."

"We do all

Wait upon God for every grace and good,"

She then rejoined. "You take it at first hand,

And we from yours: the multitude from ours.

It may leach through our souls, if our poor wills

Retain it not, and drench the fragrant sand.

And if I magnify my office—well!

'Tis a great office. What would come of all

The music of the masters, did not we

Wait at their doors, to publish to the world

What God has told them? They would be as mute

As the dumb Sphynx. They write a symphony,

An opera, an oratorio,

In language that the teacher understands,

And straight the whole world echoes to its strains

It shrills and thunders through cathedral glooms

From golden organ-tubes and voiceful choirs;

The halls of art of both the hemispheres

Resound with its divinest melodies;

The street stirs with the impulse, and we hear

The blare of martial trumpets, and the tramp

Of bannered armies swaying to its rhythm;

The hurdy-gurdies and the whistling boys

Adopt the lighter strains; and round and round

A million souls its hovering fancies float,

Like butterflies above a fair parterre,

Till, settling one by one, they sleep at last;

And lo! two petals more on every flower!

And this not all; for though the master die,

The teacher lives forever. On and on,

Through all the generations, he shall preach

The beautiful evangel;—on and on,

Till our poor race has passed the tortuous years

That lie prevening the millennium,

And slid into that broad and open sea,

He shall sail singing still the songs he learned

In the world's youth, and sing them o'er and o'er

To lapping waters, till the thousand leagues

Are overpast, and argosy and crew

Ride at their port."

"True as to facts," I said

"And as to prophecies, most credible;

But, as an illustration, false, I think.

That which the voice and instrument may do

For the composer, types may do for those

Who mint their thoughts in verse. Music is writ

In language that the people do not read—

Is lame in that—and needs interpreters;

While poetry, e'en in its noblest forms

And boldest flights, speaks their vernacular.

Your aunt can read the book within your hand

As well as you, if she desire, yet finds

Your score all Greek, until you vocalize

Its wealth of hidden meaning. As for arts

Which meet the eye in picture and in form,

They ask no mediator but the light—

No grace but privilege to shine with naught

Between them and the light. They are themselves

Expositors of that which they expose,

Or they are nothing. All the middle-men—

The fools profound—who take it on their tongues

To play the showmen, strutting up and down,

And mouthing of the beauty that they hide,

Are an impertinence."

"You leave no room

For critics," she suggested, with a smile.

"We must not spoil a trade, or starve the wives

And innocent babes it feeds."

"No care for them!"

I made reply. "They do not need much room—

Men of their build—and what they need they take.

The feeble conies burrow in the rocks;

But the trees grow, and we are not aware

Of space encumbered by them."

"Yet the fact

Still stands untouched," she added, thoughtfully,

"That greatest artists speak to fewest souls,

Or speak to them directly. They have need

Of no such ministry as waits the beck

Of the composer; but they need the life,

If not the learning, of the cultured few

Who understand them. If from out my book

I gather that which feeds me, and inspires

A nobler, sweeter beauty in my life,

And give my life to those who cannot win

From the dim text such boon, then have I borne

A blessing from the book, and been its best

Interpreter. The bread that comes from heaven

Needs finest breaking. Some there doubtless are—

Some ready souls—that take the morsel pure

Divided to their need; but multitudes

Must have it in admixtures, menstruums,

And forms that human hands or human life

Have moulded. Though the multitudes may find

Something to stir and lift their sluggish souls

In sight of great cathedrals, or in view

Of noble pictures, yet they see not all,

And not the best. That which they do not see

Must enter higher souls, and there, by art

Or life, be fashioned to their want."

"Your thought

Grows subtle," I responded, "and I grant

Its force and beauty. If the round truth lie

Somewhere between us, and I see the face

It turns to me in stronger light than you

Reveal its opposite, why, let the fault be mine;

It is not yours. You have instructed me,

And won my thanks."

"Instructed you?" she said,

With a fine blush: "you mock, you humble me.

And have I talked so much, with such an air,

That, either earnestly or in a jest,

You can say this to me?"

"'Tis not a sin,

In latitude of ours," I made reply,

"To talk philosophy; 'tis only rare

For beardless lips to do so. I have caught

From yours a finer, more suggestive scheme

Than all the wise have taught me by their books,

Or by their voices. I will think of it."

"Now may you be forgiven!" the aunt exclaimed,

Approaching unobserved. "There never lived

A quieter, more plainly speaking girl,

Than my Kathrina. All these weeks and months,

I have heard nought from her but common sense;

But when you came, why, off she went; though where

It's more than I know. You, sir, have the blame;

And you must lift your spell, and give her back

Just as you found her."

"She has practised well

Her scheme on us. She breaks to you the bread

That meets your want; to me, that meets my own,"

I said, in answering.

"Well," spoke the aunt,

"I think I'll try my hand at breaking bread:

So, follow me."

We followed to her board,

And there, in converse suited to the hour

And presence of our hostess, proved ourselves—

Quite to that lady's liking—of the earth.

We ate her jumbles for her, sipped her tea,

And revelled in the spicy succulence

Of her preserves.

While still I sat at ease,

The maiden's eye, with quick, uneasy glance,

Sought the clock's dial. Then she turned to me.

And said with sweet, respectful courtesy:

"Pray you excuse my presence for an hour.

A duty calls me out; and that performed,

I will return."

I saw she marked my look

Of disappointment—that it staggered her—

The while with words of stiffest commonplace

I gave assent. But she was on her feet;

And soon I heard her light step on the stair,

Seeking her chamber.

"Whither will she go

At such an hour as this, from you and me?"

I coldly questioned of the keen-eyed aunt.

"You men are very curious," she said.

"I knew you'd ask me. Can't a lady stir,

But you must call her to account? Who knows

She may not have some rustic lover here

With whom she keeps her tryst? 'Tis an old trick,

Not wholly out of fashion in these parts.

What matters it? She orders her own ways,

And has discretion."

With lugubrious voice

I said: "You trifle, madam, with my wish.

I know the lady has no lover here,

And so do you."

"I'm not so sure of that!"

My hostess made response; and then she laughed

A rippling, rollicking roulade, and shook

Her finger at me, till my temples burned

With the hot shame she summoned.

"There!" I said;

"You've done your worst, and learned so much, at least—

That I admire your niece. I curious!

Well, you are curious and cunning too.

Now, in the moment of your victory,

Be generous; and tell me what may call

The lady from us."

"It is Thursday night,"

She answered soberly,—"the weekly hour

At which our quiet neighborhood convenes

For social worship. You may guess the rest

Without my telling; but you cannot know

With what anticipated joy she leaves

Our company, or with what shining face

She will return."

At that, I heard her dress

Sliding the flight, and rising, made my way

To meet her at its foot. A happy smile

Illumed her features, as she gave her hand

With thought of parting. I had rallied all

My self-control and gallantry meanwhile,

And said: "Not here. I'll with you, by your leave,

So far as you may walk."

There was a flash

Of gladness in her eyes, and in her thanks

A subtler charm than gratitude.

I bade

My hostess a "good-night," and left her door.

Declining her entreaty to return.

We walked in silence, side by side, a space,

And then, with feigned indifference, I spoke:

"Your aunt has told me of your errand; else,

It had been modest in me to withhold

This tendance on your steps. She tells me you

Are quite a devotee. Whom do you meet,

In neighborhood like this, to give a zest

To hour like this?"

"Brothers and sisters all,"

She said in low reply; "and as for zest,

There's never lack of it where there is love.

When families convene, they have no need

Of more than love to give them festal joy;

Nor do they with discrimination judge

Between the high and humble. These are one;

Love makes them one."

"And you are one with these?"

"Though most unworthy of such fellowship,

I trust that I am one with these;—that they

Are one with me, and reckon me among

Their number."

"Can they do you any good?"

"They can," she said, "but were it otherwise,

I can serve them; and so should seek them still.

I help them in their songs."

We reached too soon

The open doorway of the humble hut

Which, far long years, had held the village school,

And, at a little distance, paused. The room,

Battered and black by wantonest abuse

Of the rude youth, was lit by feeble lamps,

Brought by the villagers; and scattered round

Upon the high, hacked benches, hardly less

Rude and rough-worn than they, the worshippers

In silence sat. It was no place for words.

I took the lady's hand, and said "good-night!"

In whisper. Then she turned, and disappeared

Within the sheltered gloom; but I could see

The care-worn cheeks light up with pleasant fire

As she passed in; and e'en the fainting lamps

Flared with new life, the while they caught the breath

Of her sweet robe. Then with an angry heart

I turned away, and, wrapped in selfish thought,

Took up the walk toward home.

This homely group

Of Yankee lollards she preferred to me!

These poor, pinched boobies, with their silly wives—

Ah! these were they who gave her overmuch

In the bestowal of their fellowship!

These crowned her with a peerless privilege,

Permitting her to sit with them an hour

As a dear sister! How my sore self-love

Burned with the hot affront!

With lips compressed,

Or blurting forth their anger and disgust,

I strode the meadows, stalked the silent town,

And growled and groaned in sullen helplessness

About the streets, until the midnight bell

Tolled from the old church tower;—in helplessness,

For, mattered nothing what or who she was

(I had not dared or cared to question that),

Or how offensive in her piety

And her devotion to the tasteless cult

Of the weak throng, I was her slave; and she—

Her own and God's. The miserable strife

Between my love of self and love of her

I knew was bootless; and the trenchant truth

Cut to the quick. She held within her hand

My heart, my life, my doom, yet knew it not;

And had she known, her soul was under vows

Which would forever make subordinate

Their recognized possession.

But the morn

Brought with it better mood and calmer thought:

I had the grace to gauge the heartlessness

Of my exactions, and the power to crush

The tyrant wish to tear her from the throne

To which she clung. I said: "So she love me

As a true woman loves, and give herself—

Her sweet, pure self—to me, and fill my home

With her dear presence, loyal still to me

In wifely love and wifely offices,

Though she abide in Christian loyalty

By Christian vows, she shall have liberty,

And hold it as her right."

She was my peer;

No weakling girl, who would surrender will

And life and reason, with her loving heart,

To her possessor;—no soft, clinging thing

Who would find breath alone within the arms

Of a strong master, and obediently

Wait on his whims in slavish carefulness;—

No fawning, cringing spaniel, to attend

His royal pleasure, and account herself

Rewarded by his pats and pretty words,

But a round woman, who, with insight keen,

Had wrought a scheme of life, and measured well

Her womanhood; had spread before her feet

A fine philosophy to guide her steps;

Had won a faith to which her life was brought

In strict adjustment—brain and heart meanwhile

Working in conscious harmony and rhythm

With the great scheme of God's great universe,

On toward her being's end.

I could but know

Her motives were superior to mine.

I could but feel that in her loyalty

To God and duty, she condemned my life.

Into her woman's heart, thrown open wide

In holy charity, she had drawn all

Of human kind, and found no humblest soul

Too humble for her entertainment,—none

So weak it could return no grateful boon

For what she gave; and standing modestly

Within her scheme, with meekest reverence

She bowed to those above her, yet with strong

And hearty confidence assumed a place

In service of the world, as minister

Ordained of heaven to break to it the bread

She took from other hands. And she was one

Who could see all there was of good in me,—

Could measure well the product of my power,

And give it impulse and direction: nay,

Could supplement my power; and help my heart

Against its foes.

The moment that I thrust

The selfish thirsting for monopoly

Of her affections from my godless heart,

She entered in, and reigned a goddess there.

If she had fascinated me before,

And fired my heart with passion, now she bent

My spirit to profound respect. I bowed

To the fair graces of her character,

Her queenly gifts, and the beneficence

Of her devoted life, with humbled heart

And self-depreciation. All of God

That the world held for me, I found in her;

And in her, all the God I sought. She was

My saviour from myself and from my sins;

For, with my worship of the excellence

Which she embodied, came the purity

And peace to which, through all my troubled life,

I had been stranger. Thoughts and feelings all

Were sublimated by the subtle flame

Which warmed and wrapped me; and I walked as one

Might walk on air, with things of earth beneath,

Breathing a rare, supernal atmosphere

Which every sense and faculty informed

With light and life divine.

What need to tell

Of the succeeding summer days, and all

Their deeds and incidents? They floated by

Like silent sails upon a summer sea,

That, sweeping in from farthest heaven at morn,

Traverse the vision, and at evening slide

Out into heaven again, their pennant-flames

The rosy dawns and day-falls. O'er and o'er,

I walked the path, and crossed the stream, that lay

Between me and the idol of my heart;

And every day, in every circumstance,

I found her still the same, yet not the same;

For, every day, some unsuspected grace,

Or some fresh revelation of her wealth

Of character and culture, touched my heart

To new surprise, and overflowed the cup

Whose wine was life to me.

Though I could see

That I was not unwelcome; though I knew

I gave a zest to her sequestered life,

I had built up so high my only hope

On her affection—I had given myself

So wholly to the venture for her hand,

I did not dare to speak of love, or ask

The question which, unasked, held hopefully

My destiny: which answered, might bring doom

Of madness or of death.

Meanwhile, I learned

The lady's history from other lips

Than hers—her aunt's. Alas! the old, old tale!

She had been bred to luxury; and all

That wealth could purchase for her, or the friends

Swarmed by its golden glamour could bestow,

She had possessed. But he who won the wealth,

Reaching for more, slipped from his height and fell

Dragging his house to ruin. Then he died—

Died in disgrace; and all his thousand friends

Fell off, and left his pampered family,

The while the noisy auctioneer knocked down

His house and household gods, and set adrift

The helpless life thus cruelly bereft.

The mother lived a month: the rest went forth,

Not knowing whither; but they found among

The poor a shelter for their poverty,—

Kathrina with her aunt. Thus, in few words,

A tragedy of heart-breaks and of death,

Such as the world abounds with.

But this girl,

With her quick instincts and her brave, good heart.

Determined she would live awhile, and learn

What lesson God would teach her. This she sought,

And, seeking, found, or thought she found. How well

She learned the lesson—what the lesson was—

Her life, thus far revealed, and waiting still

My feeble record, shall disclose. Enough,

Just now and here, that out of it she bore

A noble womanhood, accepting all

Her great misfortunes as the discipline

Of a paternal hand, in love prescribed

To lead her to her place, and whiten her

For Christian service.

All the summer fled;

And still my heart delayed. One pleasant eve,

When first the creaking of the crickets told

Of Autumn's opening door, I went with her

To ramble in the fields. We touched the hem

Of the dark mountain's robe, that falls in folds

Of emerald sward around his feet, and there

Upon its tufted velvet we sat down.

It was my time to speak, but I was dumb;

And silence, painful and portentous, hung

Upon us both. At length, she turned and said:

"Some days have passed since you were latest here.

Have you been ill?"

"No, I have been at work,"

I answered,—"at my own delightful work;

The first since first we met. The record lies

Where I may reach it at a word from you.

Command, and I will read it."

"I command,"

She said, responding with a laugh. "Nay, I

Entreat. I used your word, but this is mine,

And has a better sound from lips of mine.

I am your waiting auditor."

I read:

"Was it the tale of a talking bird?

Was it a dream of the night?

When have I seen it? Where have I heard

Of the haps of a dainty craft, that stirred

My spirit with affright?

"The shallop stands out from the sheltered bay

With a burden of spirits twain,—

A woman who lifts her eyes to pray,

A tall youth, trolling a roundelay,

And before them night, and the main!

"O! Star of The Sea! They will come to harm:

Nor master nor sailor is there!

The youth clasps the mast with his sinewy arm,

And laughs! Does he hold in his bosom a charm

That will baffle the sprites of the air?

O! woe to the delicate ship! O! woe!

For the sun is sunk, and behold!

The trooping phantoms that come and go

In the sky above and the waves below!

Ho! The wind blows wild and cold.

"The woman is weeping in weak despair;

The youth still clings to the mast,

With cheeks aflame, and with eyes that stare

At the phantoms hovering everywhere;

And the storm-rack rises fast!

"The phantoms close on the flying bark;

They flutter about her peak;

They sweep in swarms from the outer dark;

But the youth at the mast stands still and stark,

While they flap his stinging cheek.

"O! fierce was the shout of the goblins then!

How the gibber and laugh went round!

The shout and the laugh of a thousand men,

Echoed and answered, and echoed again,

Would have been a feebler sound.

"They shiver the bolts that the lightning flings;

They bellow and roar and hiss;

They splash the deck with their slimy wings—

Monstrous, horrible, ghastly things—

That climb from the foul abyss.

"Straight toward the blackness drove the ship;

But the youth still clung to the mast:

'I have read,' quoth he, with a proud, cold lip,

'That the devil gets never a man on the hip

Whom he scares not, first or last.'

"No star shines out at the woman's prayer;

O! madly distraught is she!

And the bark drives on with her wild despair

With shrieking fiends in the crowded air,

And fiends on the swarming sea.

"Nearer the blackness loomed; and the bark

Scudded before the breeze;

Nearer the blackness loomed, and hark!

The crash of breakers out of the dark,

And the shock of plunging seas!

"Then out of the water before their sight

A shape loomed bare and black!

So black that the darkness bloomed with white;

So black that the lightning grew strangely bright

And it lay in the shallop's track!

"O! woe! for the woman's wits ran daft

With the fearful bruit and burst;

She sprang to her feet, and flitting aft,

She plunged in the sea, and the black waves quaffed

The sweet life they had cursed.

"Light leaped the bark on the mountain-breast

Of a tenth-wave out to land;

While the sprites of the sea fell off to rest,

And the youth, unharmed, became the guest

Of the elves of the silent land.

"With banter and buffet they pressed around;

They tied his strong hands fast;

But he laughed, and said, 'I have read and found

That the devil throws never a man to the ground

Whom he scares not, first or last.'

"Under the charred and ghastly gloom,

Over the flinty stones,

They led him forth to his terrible doom,

And, plunged in a deep and noisome tomb,

They sat him among the bones.

"They left him there in the crawling mire:

They could neither maim nor kill:

For fiends of water, and earth, and fire,

Are baffled and beaten by the ire

Of a dauntless human will.

"Days flushed and faded, months passed away,

He knew by the golden light

That shot, through a loop in the wall, the ray

Which parted the short and slender day

From the long and doleful night.

"Was it a vision that cheated his eyes?

Was he awake, or no?

He stared through the loop with keen surprise.

For he saw a sweet angel from the skies,

With white wings, folded low.

"Could she not loose him from his thrall,

And lead him into the light?

'Ah me!' he murmured, 'I dare not call,

Lest she may doubt it a goblin's waul,

And leave me in swift affright!'

"She plumed her wings with a noiseless haste;

He could neither call nor cry:

She vanished into the sunny waste,

Into far blue air that he longed to taste;

And he cursed that he could not die.

"But she came again, and every day

He worshipped her where she shone;

And again she left him and floated away,

But his faithless tongue refused to pray

For the boon she could give alone.

"And there he sits in his dumb despair,

And his watching eyes grow dim:

Would God that his coward lips might dare

To utter the word to the angel fair,

That is life or death to him!"

I marked her as I read, a furtive glance

Filling each pause. The passion of the piece,

Flaming and fading, ever and anon,

Mirrored itself within her tender eyes,

Themselves the mirror of her tender soul,

And fixed attent upon my face the while.

She had not caught my meaning, but had heard

Only a weird, wild story. When I paused,

Folding the manuscript, I saw a shade

Of disappointment sweep her face, and marked

A question rising in her eyes. She knew

That I was waiting for her words, and turned

Her look away, and for long moments gazed

Into the brooding dusk.

"Speak it!" I said.

"'Twas very strange and sad," she answered me.

"Why do you write such things?—or, writing such,

Leave them so incomplete? The prisoned youth,

Thus unreleased, will haunt me while I live.

I shudder while I think of him."

Then I:

"The poem will be finished, by-and-by,

For this is history, and antedates

No fact that it records. Whether this youth

Shall live entombed, or reach the blessed air,

Depends upon his angel; for he calls—

I hear him call, and call again her name

Kathrina! O! Kathrina!"

Like the flash

Of the hot lightning, the significance

Of the strange vision gleamed upon her face

In a bright, throbbing flame, that fell full soon

To ashen paleness. By unconscious will

We both arose. She vainly tried to speak,

And gazed into my eyes with such a look

Of tender questioning, of half-reproach,

Of struggling, doubting, hesitating joy,

As few men ever see, and none but once.

Are there not lofty moments, when the soul

Leaps to the front of being, casting off

The robes and clumsy instruments of sense,

And, postured in its immortality,

Reveals its independence of the clod

In which it dwells?—moments in which the earth

And all material things, all sights and sounds,

All signals, ministries, interpreters,

Relapse to nothing, and the interflow

Of thought and feeling, love and life go on

Between two spirits, raised to sympathy

By an inspiring passion, as, in heaven,

The body dust, within an orb outlived,

It shall go on forever?

Moments like these—

Nay, these in very truth—were given us then.

Who shall expound—ah! who but God alone,

The everlasting mystery of love?

She spoke not, but I knew that she was mine.

I breathed no word, but she was well assured

That I was wholly hers.

In what disguise

Our love had hid, and wrought its miracle;

Behind what semblance of indifference,

Or play of courtesy, it spun the cords

That bound our hearts in one, was mystery

Like love itself. The swift intelligence

Of interchange of perfect faith and troth,

Of gift of life and person, of the thrill

Of triumph in my soul and gratitude

In hers, without a gesture, or a word,

Was like the converse of the continents

Tracking with voiceless flight the slender wire

That underlay the throbbing mystery

Between our souls, and made our heart-beats one.

I opened wide my arms, and she, my own,

Sobbed on my breast with such excess of joy,

In such embrace of passionate tenderness,

As heaven may yield again, but never earth.

Slow in the golden twilight, toward her home,

Her hand upon my arm, we loitered on,

Silent at first, and then with quiet speech

Broaching our plans, or tracing in review

The history of our springing love, when she,

Lifting her soft blue eyes to mine:

"Dear Paul!

There are some things, and some I will not name,

That make me sad, e'en in this height of joy.

In the wild lay that you have read to-night,

You make too much of me. No heart of man,

Though loving well and loving worthily,

Can be content with any human love.

No woman, though the pride and paragon

Of all her sex, can take the place of God.

No angel she: nor is she quite a man

In power and courage,—gifts which charm her most

And which, possessing most, disrobe her charms,

And make her less a woman. If she stand

In fair equality with man—his mate—

Each unto each the rounded complement

Of their humanity, it is enough;

And such equality must ever lie

In their unequal gifts. This thing, at least,

Is true as God: she is not more than he,

And sits upon no throne. To be adored

By man, she must be placed upon a throne

Built by his hands, and sit an idol there,

Degraded by the measure of the flight

Between God's thought and man's."

Responding, I

"Fix your own place, my love; it is your right,

'Tis well to have a theory, and sit

In the centre of it, mistress of its law,

And subject also;—to set men up here

And women there, in a fine equipoise

Of gift and grace and import. It conveys

To nicely-working minds a pleasant sense

Of order, like a well-appointed room,

Where one may see, in various stuffs and wares,

Forethoughts of color brought to harmony;

Strict balancings of quantity and form;

Flowers in the centre, and, beside the grate,

A rack for shovel and tongs. But minds like these

(Your pardon, love!) are likely to arrange

The window-lights to save the furniture,

And spoil the pictures on the wall. And you,

In the adjustment of your theory,

Would shut the light from her whose mind informs

Its harmonies. All worship, in my thought,

Goes hand in hand with love. We cannot love,

And fail to worship what we love. While you

Worship the strength and courage which you find

In him who has your heart, he bows to all

Of faith and sweetness which he finds in you.

If, in our worship, we have need to build

Noblest ideals, taking much from God

With which to make them perfect in our eyes,

Shall God mark blame? We worship him the while,

In attributes his own, or attributes

With which our thought invests him. As for me—

It is no secret—I am what you call

A godless man; yet what is worshipful,

Or seems to be so, that with all my heart

I worship; and I worship while I love.

You deem yourself the dwelling-place of God,

And keep your spirit cleanly for his feet.

All merit you abjure, ascribing all

To him who dwells within you. How can you

Forbid that I fall down and worship you,

When what I find to worship is not yours,

But God's alone? I know the ecstasy

Enlarges, strengthens, purifies my soul,

And blesses me with peace. My love, my life,

You are my all. I have no other good,

And, in this moment of my happiness,

I ask no other."

Tears were in her eyes,

Her clasped hands clinging fondly to my arm,

While under droop of lashes she replied:

"I feel, dear Paul, that this is sophistry.

It does not touch my judgment or my heart

With motive of conviction. In what way

God may be working to reclaim your will

And worship to himself, I cannot know.

If through your love for me, or mine for you,

Then, as his grateful, willing instrument,

I yield myself to him. But this is true:

God is not worshipped in his attributes.

I do not love your attributes, but you.

Your attributes all meet me otherwhere,

Blended in other personalities,

Nor do I love, nor do I worship them,

Or those who bear them. E'en the spotted pard

Will dare a danger which will make you pale,

But shall his courage steal my heart from you?

You cheat your conscience, for you know that I

May like your attributes, yet love not you;

Nay, worship them indeed, despising you.

I do not argue this to damp your joy,

But make it rational. If you presume

Perfection in me,—if you lavish all

The largess of your worship and your love

On me, imposing on my head a crown

Stolen from God's, there surely waits your heart

The pang of disappointment. There will come

A sad, sad time, when, in your famished soul,

The cry for something more, and more divine,

Will rise, nor be repressed."

There is a charm

In earnestness, when it inspires the lips

Of one we love, that spoils their argument,

And yields so much of pleasure and of pride,

That the conviction which they seek evades

Their eager fingers, and with throbbing wings

Crows from its covert.

She was casuist,

Cunning and clear; and I was proud of her;

And though I knew that she had swept away

My refuges of lies like chaff, and proved

My fair words fustian, I was moved to mirth

Over the solemn ruin. Had it been

A decent thing to do, I should have laughed

Full in her face; but knowing that her words

Were offspring of her conscience and her love,

I could no less than hold respectfully

Her earnest warning.

"Well, I'll take the risk,"

I said. "While you shall have the argument,

I will have you, who, on the whole, I like

Better than that. And you shall have your way,

And I my own, in common liberty,

With things like these. You, doubtless, are to me

What I am not to you. We are unlike

In life and circumstance—alike alone

In this: that better than all else on earth

We love each other. This is basis broad

For happiness, or broad enough for me.

If you build better, you are fortunate,

Ay, fortunate indeed; and some fine day

We'll talk about it. Let us have to-night

Joy in our new possessions, and defer

This little joust of wits and consciences

To more convenient season."

We had reached

The cottage door at this; and there her aunt

Awaited our return. So, hand in hand,

Assuming show of rustic bashfulness,

We paused before her, and with bows profound

Made our obeisance.

"Well?" she said at length;

"Well?—and what of it?"

"Are you not surprised?"

I asked.

"Surprised, indeed! Surprised at what?"

"At what you see: and this! and this!" I said,

Planting a kiss upon each lovely cheek

Of my betrothed, that straightway bloomed with rose.

"What! are you blind, my aunt?"

"You silly fools!

I've seen it from the first," she answered me.

"No doubt you thought that you were very deep,

Very mysterious—all that sort of thing.

I've watched you, and if you, young man, had been

Aught but a coward, it had come before,

And saved some sleep o' nights to both of you.

But down upon your knees, for benison

Of one who loves you both."

We knelt, and then

She kissed us, leaving on our cheeks the tear

That sprang to brim the moment. Her shrewd eyes

That melted in the sympathy of love,

Would not meet ours again, but turned away,

And sought in solitude to drain themselves

Of their strange passion.

God forbid that I,

With weak and sacrilegious lips, betray

The confidence of love; or tear aside

The secrecy behind whose snowy folds

Honor and virgin modesty retire

For holiest communion! For the fire

Which burns upon that altar is of God.

Its tongues of flame, throughout all time and space,

Speak but one language, understood by all,

But sacred ever to the wedded hearts

That listen to their breathings.

In the deep hours of night

I left the cottage, brain and heart o'erfilled

With the ethereal vintage I had quaffed.

Disturbing not the drowsy ferryman,

I slipped his little wherry from the sand,

And in the star-sprent river lipped the oars

That pulled me homeward. The enchanting tide

Was smooth continuation of the dream

On which my spirit, holily afloat,

Had glided through long hours of happiness.

Earth, by the strange, delicious ecstasy,

Was changed to paradise; and something kin

To gratitude arose within my soul—

A fleeting passion, dying all too soon,

Lacking the root which faith alone can feed.

I touched the shore; but when my hasting feet

Started the homeward walk, there came a change.

Down from the quiet stars there fell a voice,

Heard in the innermost, that troubled me:

"She is not more than you: why worship her?

And she will die: what will remain for you?

You may die first, indeed: then what resource?

You have no sympathy with her in things

Ordained within, her conscience and her life

The things supreme: can there be marriage thus?

Is e'en such bliss as may be possible

Sure to be yours? Fate has a thousand hands

To dash your lifted cup."

With thoughts like these,

A vague uneasiness invaded me,

And toned the triumph of my passion, till,

Almost in anger, I exclaimed at last:

"This is reaction. I have flown too high

Above the healthy level, and I feel

The press of denser air. The equipoise

Of circumstance and feeling will be reached

All in good time. Rest and to-morrow's sun

Will bring the remedy, and, with the mists,

This cloud will pass away."

Then with clenched hands

I swore I would be happy,—that my soul

Should find its satisfaction in her love;

And that, if there should ever come a time

Of cold satiety, or I should find

Weakness or fault where I had thought was strength

And full perfection, I would e'en endow

Her poverty with all the hoarded wealth

Of my imagination, making her

The woman of my want, in plenitude

Of strength and loveliness.

The breezy days

Over whose waves my buoyant life careered,

Rolled to October, falling on its beach

With bursts of mellow music; and I leaped

Upon the longed-for shore; for, in that month,

My dear betrothed, deferring to the stress

Of my impatient wish, had promised me

Her hand in wedlock.

Ere the happy day

Dawned on the world, the world was draped in robes

Meet for the nuptials. Baths of sunny haze,

Steeping the ripened leaves from day to day,

And dainty kisses of the frost at night,

Joined in the subtile alchemy that wrought

Such miracles of change, that myriad trees

Which pranked the meads and clothed the forest glooms

Bloomed with the tints of Eden. Had the earth

Been splashed with blood of grapes from every clime,

Tinted from topaz to dim carbuncle,

Or orient ruby, it would not have been

Drenched with such waste of color. All the hues

The rainbow knows, and all that meet the eye

In flowers of field and garden, joined to tell

Each tree's close-folded secret. Side by side

Rose sister maples, some in amber gold,

Others incarnadine or tipped with flame;

And oaks that for a hundred years had stood,

And flouted one another through the storms—

Boasting their might—proclaimed their pique or pride

In dun, or dyes of Tyre. The sumac-leaves

Blazed with such scarlet that the crimson fruit

Which hung among their flames was touched to guise

Of dim and dying embers; while the hills

That met the sky at the horizon's rim—

Dabbled with rose among the evergreens,

Or stretching off in sweeps of clouted crimson—glowed

As if the archery of sunset clouds,

By squads and fierce battalions, had rained down

Its barbed and feathered fire, and left it fast

To advertise th' exploit.

In such pomp

Of autumn glory, by the simplest rites,

Kathrina gave her hand to me, and I

Pledged truth and life to her. I bore her home

Through shocks of maize, revealing half their gold;

Past gazing harvesters with creaking wains

That brimmed with fruitage—my adored, my wife,

Fruition of my hope—the proudest freight

That ever passed that way!

My troops of friends,

Grown strangely warm and strangely numerous

With scent of novelty and pleasant cheer,

Assisted me to place upon her throne

My household queen. Right royally she sat

The new-born dignity. Most graciously

She spoke and smiled among the silken clouds

That, fold on perfumed fold, like frankincense

Enveloped her, through half the festal night,

With welcome and good wishes. I was proud:

For was not I a king where she was queen?

And queen she was—though consort in my home,

Queen regnant in the realm of womanhood,

By right of every charm.

Into her place,

As mistress of all home economies,

She slid without a jar, as if the Fates,

By concert of foreordinate design,

Had fitted her for it, and it for her,

And, having joined them well, were satisfied.

Obedient to the orbit of our love,

We came and went, revolving round our home

In spheral harmony—twin stars made one,

And loyal to one law.

When at our board,

All viands lifted by her hand became

Ambrosial; and her light, elastic step

From room to room, in busy household cares,

Timed with my heart, and filled me with a sense

Of harmony and peace. Days, weeks, and months

Lapsed like soft measures, rhyming each with each.

All charged with thoughtful ministries to me,

And not to me alone; for I was proud

To know that she was counted by the good

As a good power among them,—by the poor,

As angel sent of God, on whom they called

His blessing down.

She held her separate life

Of prayer and Christian service, without show

Of sanctity, without obtrusiveness;

And, though I could but know she never sought

A blessing for herself, forgetting me

In her petition, not in all those months

Did word of difference betray the gulf

Between our souls and lives. She had her plan:

I guessed it, and respected it. She felt

That if her life were not an argument

To move me, nothing that her lips might say

Could win me to her wish. Pride would repel

What it could not refute, and pleasantry

Parry the thrusts that love could not resent.

A whole year sped, yet not a line of verse

Had grown beneath my pen. When I essayed

To brace my powers to effort, and to call

Forth from their camp and covert the bright ranks

Of tuneful numbers, no responsive shout

Answered the bugle-blast, and from my hand—

Irresolute and nerveless as a babe's—

My falchion fell.

She rallied me on this;

But I had nought to say, save this, perhaps:

That she, being all my world, had left no room

For other occupation than my love.

She did not smile at this: it was no jest,

But saddest truth. I had grown enervate

In the warm atmosphere which I had breathed;

And this, with consciousness that in her soul—

As warm with love as mine—each gentle power

Was kindling with new life from day to day,

Growing with my decline.

Well, in good time,

There came to us a child, the miniature

Of her on whose dear breast my babyhood

Was nursed and cradled; and my happy heart.

Charged with a double tenderness, received

And blessed the precious gift. Another fount

Of human love gurgled to meet my lips.

Another store of good, as rich and pure,

In its own kind, as that from which I drank,

Was thus discovered to my taste, and I

Feasted upon its fulness.

With the gift

That brimmed my cup of joy, there came a grace

To her who bore it of fresh loveliness.

If I had loved the maiden and the bride,

The mother, through whose pain my heart had won

Its new possession, fastened to my heart

With a new sympathy. Whatever dross

Our months of intimacy had betrayed

Within her character, was purged away,

And she was left pure gold. Nay, I should say,

Whatever goodness had not been revealed

Through the relations of her heart to mine

As loving maid and mistress, found the light

Through her maternity. A heavenly change

Passed o'er her soul and o'er her pallid face,

As if the unconscious yearning of a life

Had found full satisfaction in the birth

Of the new being. Her long weariness

Was but a trance of peace and gratitude;

And as she lay—her babe upon her breast,

Her eyelids closed—I could but feel that heaven,

Should it hold all the good of which she dreamed

Had little more for her.

And when again

She moved about the house, in ministry

To me and to her helpless child, I knew

That I had tasted every precious good

That woman bears to man. Ay, more than this:

That not one man in thousands had received

Such largess of affection, and such prize

Of womanhood, as I had found in her,

And made my own. The whole enchanting round

Of pure, domestic commerce had been mine.

A lover blest, a husband satisfied,

A father crowned! Love had no other boon

To offer me, and held within its gift

No other title.

Thus, within the space

Of two swift years, I traversed the domain

Of novelty, and learned that I must glean

The garnered fields of my experience

To gratify the greed that still possessed

My sateless heart. The time had come to me—

Which I had half foreseen—when, by my will,

My interest in those I loved should live

Predominant in all my life. I nursed

With jealous care my passion for my wife.

I raised her to an apotheosis

In my imagination, where I bowed

And paid my constant homage. I was still

Her fond and loyal lover; but my heart,

That had so freely drunk, with full content,

Had seen the bottom of the cup she held;

And what remained but tricks to eke it out,

And artifice to give it piquancy,

And sips to cool my tongue, the while my heart

Was hollow with its thirst? My little child

Was precious to my soul beyond all price;

Mother and babe were all that they could be

To any heart of man; and yet—and yet!

Of all the dull, dead weights man ever bore,

Sure, none can wear the soul with discontent

Like consciousness of power unused. To feel

That one has gift to move the multitude,—

To act upon the life of humankind

By force of will, or fire of eloquence,

Or voice of lofty art, and yet, to feel

No stir of mighty motive in the soul

To action or endeavor; to behold

The fairest prizes of this fleeting life

Borne off by patient men who, day by day,

By bravest toil and struggle, reach the heights

Of great achievement, toiling, struggling thus

With a strong joy, and with a fine contempt

For soft and selfish passion; to see this,

Yet cling to such a passion, like a slave

Who hugs his chains in sluggish impotence,

Refusing freedom lest he lose the crust

The chain of bondage warrants him—ah! this

Is misery indeed!

Such misery

Was mine. I held the consciousness of power

To labor even-headed with the best

Who wrought for fame, or strove to make themselves

Felt in the world's great life; and yet, I felt

No lift to enterprise, from heaven above

Or earth beneath; for neither God nor man

Lived in my love. My home held all my world;

Yet it was evident—I felt, I knew—

That nought could fill my opening want but toil;

And there were times when I had hailed with joy

The curse of poverty, compelling me

To labor for my bread, and for the bread

Of those I loved.

My neighbors all around

Were happy in their work. The plodding hind

Who served my hand, or groomed my petted horse.

Whistled about his work with merry heart,

And filled his measure of content with toil.

In all the streets and all the busy fields,

Men were astir, and doing with their might

What their hands found to do. They drove the plough,

They trafficked, builded, delved, they spun and wove,

They taught and preached, they hasted up and down

Each on his little errand, and their eyes

Were full of eager fire, as if the earth

And all its vast concerns were on their hands.

Their homes were fresh with guerdon every night,

And ripe with impulse to new industry

At each new dawn.

I saw all this, but knew

That they were not like me—were most unlike

In constitution and condition. Thus,

My power to do, and do the single thing

My power was shaped to do, became, instead

Of wings to bear me, weights to burden me.

The moiling multitude for little tasks

Found little motives plenty; but for me,

Who in my indolence they all despised—

Not understanding me—no motive rose

To lash or lead. Even the Jove I dreamed

Would give me impulse had defrauded me.

Feeble and proud; strong, yet emasculate;

Centred in self, and still despising self;

Goaded, yet held; convinced, but never moved?

Such conflict ofttimes held and harried me

That death had met with welcome. If I read,

I read to kill my time. No interest

In the great thoughts of others moved my soul,

Because I had no object; useless quite

The knowledge and the culture I possessed;

And if I rode, the stale monotony

Of the familiar landscapes sickened me.

In these dull years, my toddling little wean

Grew into prattling childhood, and I gained

Such fresh delight from her as kept my heart

From fatal gloom; but more and more I shunned

The world around me, more and more drew in

The circle of my life, until, at last,

My home became my hermitage. I knew

The dissolution of the spell would come,

And, though I dreaded it, I longed to greet

The crash and transformation. If my pride

Forbade the full confession to my wife

That time had verified her prophecy,

It failed to hold the truth from her. She read,

With a true woman's insight, all my heart;

But with a woman's sensitiveness shrank

From questions which might seem to carry blame;

And so, for years, there lay between our souls

The bar of silence.

One sweet summer eve,

After my lamb was folded and before

The lamps were lighted, as I sat alone

Within my room, I heard reluctant feet

Seeking my door. They paused, and then I heard:

"May I come in?"

"Ay, you may always come;

And you are welcome always," I replied.

The room was dim, but I could see her face

Was pale, and her long lashes wet. "Your seat"—

I said, with open arms. Upon my knee,

One hand upon my shoulder, she sank down

As if the heart within her breast were lead,

And she were weary with its weight.

"My wife,

What burden now?" I asked her tenderly.

She fixed her swimming eyes on mine, and said:

"My dear, you are not happy. Years have gone

Since you have been content. I bring no words

Of blame against you: you have been to me

A comfort and a joy. Your constancy

Has honored me as few of all my sex

Are honored by your own; but while you pine

With secret pain, I am so wholly yours

That I must pine with you. I've waited long

For you to speak; and now I come to you

To ask you this one question: Is there aught

Of toil or sacrifice within my power

To ease your heart, or give you liberty

Beyond the round to which you hold your feet?

Speak freely, frankly, as to one who loves

Her husband better than her only child,

And better than herself."

I drew her head

Down to my cheek, and said: "My angel wife!

Whatever torment or disquietude

I may have suffered, you have never been

Its cause, or its occasion. You are all—

You have been all—that womanhood can be

To manhood's want; and in your woman's love

And woman's pain, I have found every good

My life has known since first our lives were joined.

You knew me better than I knew myself;

And your prophetic words have haunted me

Like thoughts of retribution: 'There will come

'A sad, sad time, when in your famished soul

'The cry for something more, and more divine

'Will rise, nor be repressed.' For something more

My spirit clamors: nothing more divine

I ask for."

"What shall be this 'something more'?

"Work," I replied; "ay, work, but never here;

Work among men, where I may feel the touch

Of kindred life; work where the multitudes

Are surging; work where brains and hands

Are struggling for the prizes of the world;

Work where my spirit, driven to its bent

By competitions and grand rivalries,

Shall vindicate its own pre-eminence,

And wring from a reluctant world the meed

Of approbation and respect for which

It yearns with awful hunger; work, indeed,

Which shall compel the homage of the souls

That creep around me here, and pity you

Because, forsooth, the Fates have hobbled you

With a dull drone. I know how sweet the love

Of two fond souls; and I will have the hearts

Of millions. These shall satisfy my greed,

And round the measure of my life; and these

My work shall win me."

At these childish words

She raised her head, and with a sweet, sad smile

Of love and pity blent, made her response:

"Not yet, my husband—if your wife may speak

A thought that crosses yours—not yet have you

Found the great secret of content. But work

May help you toward it, and in any case

Is better far than idleness. For this,

You ask of me to sacrifice this home

And all the truest friends my life has gained.

I do it from this moment; glad to prove,

At any tender cost, my love for you,

And faith in your endeavor. I will go

To any spot of earth where you may lead,

And go rejoicing. Let us go at once!"

"I burn my ships behind me," I replied.

"Measure the cost: be sure no secret hope

Of late return be found among the flames;

For, if I go, I leave no single thread,

Save that which binds me to my mother's grave.

To draw me back."

"My love shall be the torch

To light the fire," she answered.

Then we rose,

And, with a kiss, marked a full period

To love's excess, and with a sweet embrace

Wrote the initial of a stronger life.

A REFLECTION.

Oh! not by bread alone is manhood nourished

To its supreme estate!

By every word of God have lived and flourished

The good men and the great.

Ay, not by bread alone!

"Oh! not by bread alone!" the sweet rose, breathing

In throbs of perfume, speaks;

"But myriad hands, in earth and air, are wreathing

The blushes for my cheeks.

Ay, not by bread alone!"

"Oh! not by bread alone!" proclaims in thunder

The old oak from his crest;

"But suns and storms upon me, and deep under,

The rocks in which I rest.

Ay, not by bread alone!"

"Oh! not by bread alone!" The truth flies singing

In voices of the birds;

And from a thousand pastured hills is ringing

The answer of the herds:

"Ay, not by bread alone!"

Oh! not by bread alone! for life and being

Are finely complex all,

And increment, with element agreeing,

Must feed them, or they fall.

Ay, not by bread alone!

Oh! not by love alone, though strongest, purest

That ever swayed the heart;

For strongest passion evermore the surest

Defrauds each manly part.

Ay, not by love alone!

Oh! not by love alone is power engendered.

Until within the soul

The gift of every motive has been rendered,

It is not strong and whole.

Ay, not by love alone!

Oh! not by love alone is manhood nourished

To its supreme estate:

By every word of God have lived and flourished

The good men and the great.

Ay, not by love alone!

PART III.

LABOR.

Ten years of love!—a sleep, a pleasant dream

That passed its culmen in the early half,

Concluding in confusion—a wild scene

Of bargains, auctions, partings, and what not?—

And an awaking!

I was in Broadway,

A unit in a million. Like a bath

In ocean surf, blown in from farthest seas

Under the August ardors, the grand rush

Of crested life assailed me with its waves,

And cooled me while it fired. With sturdy joy

I sought its broadest billows, and resigned

My spirit to their surge and sway; or stood

In sheltered coves, reached only by the spume

And crepitant bubbles of the yesty floods,

Drinking the roar, the sheen, the restlessness,

As inspiration, both of sense and soul.

I saw the waves of life roll up the steps

Of great cathedrals and retire; and break

In charioted grandeur at the feet

Of marble palaces, and toss their spray

Of feathered beauty through the open doors,

To pile the restless foam within; and burst

On crowded caravansaries, to fall

In quick return; and in dark currents glide

Through sinuous alleys and the grimy loops

Of reeking cellars; and with softest plash

Assail the gilded shrines of opulence,

And slide in musical relapse away.

With senses dazed and stunned, and soul o'erfilled

With chaos of new thoughts, I turned away,

And sought my city home. There all was calm,

With wife and daughter waiting my return,

And eager with their welcome. That was life!—

An interest in the great world of life,

A place for toil within a world of toil,

And love for its reward. "Amen!" I said,

"And twice amen! I've found my life at last,

And we will all be happy."

Day by day—

The while I sought adjustment to the life

Which I had chosen, and with careful thought

Gathered to hand the fair material

Elect by Fancy for the organism

Over whose germ she brooded—I went out,

To bathe again upon the shore of life

My long-enfeebled nature.

Every day

I met some face I knew. My college friends

Came up in strange disguises. Here was one,

With a white neck-cloth and a saintly face,

Who had been rusticated and disgraced

For lawlessness. Now he administered

A charge which proved that he had been at work,

And made himself a man. And there was one—

A lumpy sort of boy, as memory

Recalled him to me—grown to portliness

And splendid spectacles. He drove a chaise,

And practised surgery,—was on his way

To meet a class of youth, who sought to be

Great surgeons like himself, and took full notes

Of all his stolen wisdom. By his watch—

A gold repeater, with a mighty chain—

He gave me just five minutes; then rolled off—-

Pretension upon wheels. Another grasped

My hand as if I were his bosom friend,

Just in from a long voyage. He was one

Who stole my wood in college, and received

With grace the kick I gave him. He had grown

To be the tail of a portentous firm

Of city lawyers: managed, as he said,

The matter of collections; and had made

In his small way—to use his modest phrase,

Truthful as modest—quite a pretty plum.

He was o'erjoyed to see me in the town:

Hoped I would call upon him at his den:

If I had any business in his line,

Would do it for me promptly; as for price,

No need to talk of that between two friends!

But these, and all—the meanest and the best—

Were hard at work. They always questioned me

Before we parted, touching my pursuits;

And though they questioned kindly, I grew sore

Under the repetition, and ashamed

To iterate my answer, till I burned

To do some work, so lifted into fame,

That shame should be to him whose ignorance

Compelled a question.

Simplest foresters

Have learned the trick of woodland broods, that fly

In radiant divergence from the flash

Of death and danger, and, when all is still,

Steal back to where their fellows bit the dust

For rendezvous. And thus society

Follows the brutal instinct. When the friends,

Who from her father's ruin fled amain,

Found out my wife, and learned that it was safe

To gather back to the old feeding-ground,

They came. Her old home had become my own

And they were all delighted. It was sweet

To have her back again; and it was sad

To know that those who once were happy there,

Dispensing happiness, could come no more.

It had its modicum of earnestness,—

This talk of theirs—and she received it all

With hearty courtesy, and yielded it

The unction of her charity, so far

That it was smooth and redolent to her.

The difference—the world-wide difference—

Between my wife and them was obvious;

But she was generous through nature's gift

I fancied—could not well be otherwise;

Although their fawning filled me with disgust.

Oh! fool and blind! not to perceive the Christ

That shone and spoke in her!

The hour approached—

The predetermined time—when I should close

My study door, and wrap my kindling brain

In the poetic dream which, day by day,

Was gathering consistence in my brain.

The quick, creative instinct in me plumed

Its pinions for the flight, and I could feel

The influx of fresh power; but whence it

I did not question; though it fired my heart

With the assurance of success.

I told

My dear companion of my hopeful plans

For winning fame, and making for myself

A lofty place; but I could not inspire

Her heart with my ambition, or win o'er

Her judgment to my motive. She adhered

To her old theory, and gave no room

To any motive it did not embrace.

We argued much, but always argued wide,

And ended where we started. Postulates

On which we stood in perfect harmony,

Were points of separation, out from which

We struck divergently, till sympathy,

That only lives by rhythm of thoughts and hearts,

Lay dead between us.

"Man loves praise," I said.

"It is an appetence which He who made

The human soul, made to be satisfied.

It is a tree He planted. If it grow

On that which feeds it, and become at last

Thrifty and fruitful, it is still His own,

With usury. And if, in His intent,

This passion have no place among the powers

Of active life, why is it mighty there

From youngest childhood? Pray you what is fame

But concrete praise?—the universal voice

Which bears, from every quarter of the earth.

Its homage to a name, that grows thereby

To be its own immortal monument

Outlasting all the marble and the bronze

Which cunning fingers, since the world began,

Have shaped or stamped with story? What is fame

But aggregate of praise? And if it be

Legitimate to win, for sake of praise,

The praise of one, why not of multitudes?"

"Ay," she replied; "'tis true that men love praise

And it is true that He who made the soul

Planted therein the love of praise, to be

A motive in its life—all true so far?

And so far we agree. But motives all

Have their appropriate sphere and sway, like men

Who bear them in their breasts. The love of praise

Fills life with fine amenities. Not all

Who live have pleasant tempers, and not all

The gift of gracious manners, or the love

Of nobler motive, higher meed than praise.

The world is full of bears, who smooth their hair,

And glove their paws, and put on manly airs,

And hold our honey sacred, and our lives

Our own, because they hunger for our praise.

'Tis a fine thing for bears—this love of praise—

And those who deal with them; and a good thing

For children, and for parents, teachers—all

Who have them in their keeping. It may hold

A little mind to rectitude, until

It grow, and grow ashamed to yield itself

To such a petty motive. Children all

Like sugar, and it may admit of doubt

Whether our praise or sugar sweetens more

Their petulant sub-acids; but a man

Would choke in swallowing the compliment

Which we should pay him, were we but to say

'Go to! Do some great deed, and you shall have

Your pay in sugar:—maple, mind you, now,

So you shall do it featly.'"

"Very good!"

I answered, "very good, indeed! if we

Engage in talk for sport; but argument

On themes like these must have the element

Of candor. Highest truth, in certain lights,

May be ridiculous, and yet be truth.

Women are angels: just a little weak

And just a little wicked, it may be,

Yet still the sweetest beings in the world;

But when one stands with apprehensive gasp

At verge of sternutation, or leaps off,

Projecting all her being in a sneeze,

Or snores with lips wide-parted, or essays

The 'double-quick,' we turn our eyes away

In sadness, that a creature so divine

Can be so shockingly ridiculous;

Yet who shall say she's not an angel still?

Now you present to me the meanest face

Of a most noble truth. I laugh with you

Over its sorry semblance; but the truth

Is still divine, and claims our reverence.

The great King Solomon—and you believe

In Solomon—has said that a good name

Is more to be desired than much fine gold.

If a good name be matter of desire

Beyond all wealth—and you will pardon me

For holding to the record—it may stand

As a grand motive in the life of man,

To grand endeavor. I have yet to learn

That Solomon addressed his words to bears,

Or little children. I am forced to think

That you and I, and all who read his words,

Are those for whom he wrote."

Rejoining she:

"A good may be the subject of desire,

And not be motive to achievement. Life,

If I may speak the riddle, is a scheme

Of indirections. My own happiness

Is something to desire; and yet, I know

That I must win it by forgetting it

In ministry to others. If I make

My happiness the motive of my work,

I spoil it by the taint of selfishness.

But are you sure that you do not presume

Somewhat too much, in claiming the desire

For a good name as motive of your life?

Greatness, not goodness, is the end you seek,

If I mistake you not; and these are held,

In the world's thought, as two, and most distinct.

King Solomon was wise, but wiser He

Who said to those who loved and followed him,

'Who would be great among you, let him serve.'

The greatest men and artists should be such,

For they are God's nobility and man's

Should work from greatest motives. Selfishness

Is never great, and moves to no great deeds.

To honor God, to benefit mankind,

To serve with lofty gifts the lowly needs

Of the poor race for which the God-man died,

And do it all for love—oh! this is great!

And he who does this will achieve a name

Not only great but good."

"Not in this world,"

I answered her. "I know too much of it.

The world is selfish; and it never gives

Due credit to a motive which assumes

To be above its own. If a man write,

It takes for granted that he writes for fame,

And judges him accordingly. It holds

Of no account all other aims and ends;

And visits with contempt the man who bears

A mission to his kind. The critic pens

That twiddle with his work, or play with it

As cats with mice, are not remarkable

For gentle instincts; and my name must live

By pens like these. I choose to take the world

Just as I find it, and I pitch my tune

To the world's key, that it may sing my tune.

And sing for me. Ay, and I take myself

Just as I find myself. I do not love

The human race enough to work for it.

Having no motive of philanthropy,

I'll make pretence to none. The love of praise

I count legitimate and laudable.

'Tis not the noblest motive in the world,

But it is good; and it has won more fames

Than any other. Surely, my good wife,

You would not shut me from it, and deprive

My power of its sole impulse."

"No; oh! no,"

She answered quickly. "I am only sad

That it should be the captain of your host.

All creatures of the brain are the result

Of many motives and of many powers.

All life is such, indeed. The power that leads—

The motive dominant—this stamps the work

With its own likeness. Throughout all the world

Are careful souls, with careful consciences,

That pierce themselves with questionings and fears

Because that, with the motives which are good,

And which alone they seek, a hundred come

They do not seek, and aye sophisticate

Their finest action. They are wrong in this:

All motives bowing to one leadership,

And aiding its emprise, are one with it—

The same in trend, the same in terminus.

All the low motives that obey the law,

And aid the work, of one above them all,

Do holy service, and fulfil the end

For which they were designed. The love of praise

Is not the lowest motive which can move

The human soul. Nay, it may do good work

As a subordinate, and leave no soil

On whitest fabric, at whose selvage shines

The Master's broidered signature. Although

You write for fame, think not you will escape

The press of other motives. You love me;

You love your child; you love your pleasant home;

You love the memory of one long dead.

These, joined with all those qualities of heart

Which make you dear to me, will throng around

The leader you appoint, and come and go

Under his banner; and the work of God

Will thrive through these, the while your own goes on

God will not be defrauded, nor yet man;

And you, who like the Pharisees make prayer

At corners of the streets, for praise of men,

Will have reward you seek."

"Ay, verily!"

Responded I with laughter. "Verily!

Though not a saint, I'll do a saintly work

For my own profit, and in spite of all

The selfishness that moves me. Better, this,

Than I suspected. My sweet casuist—

My gentle, learned, lovely casuist—

I thank you; and I'll pay you more than thanks.

I'll promise that when these fine motives come,

And volunteer their service, they shall find

Welcome and entertainment, and a place

Within the rank and file, with privilege

Of quick promotion, so they show themselves

Motives of mettle."

This the type of talk

That passed between us. I was not a fool

To count her wisdom worthless; nor a God,

To work regeneration in myself.

That something which I longed for, to fill up

The measure of my good, was human praise;

Yet I could see that she was wholly right,

And that she held within herself resource

Of satisfaction better than my own.

But I was quite content—content to know

I trod the average altitude of those

Within the paths of art, and had no aims

To be misconstrued or misunderstood

By Pride and Selfishness—that these, in truth,

Expected of me what I had to give.

Strange, how a man may carry in his heart,

From year to year—through all his life, indeed—

A truth, or a conviction, which shall be

No more a part of it, and no more worth

Than to his flask the cork that slips within!

Of this he learns by sourness of his wine,

Of muddle of its color; by the bits

That vex his lips while drinking; but he feels

No impulse in his hand to draw it forth,

And bid it crown and keep the draught it spoils.

I write this, here, not for its relevance

To this one passage of my story, but

Because there slipped into my consciousness

Just at this juncture, and would not depart,

A truth I carried there for many years,

Each minute seeing, feeling, tasting it,

Yet never touching it with an attempt

To draw it forth, and put it to its place.

One evening, when our usual theme was up,

I asked my wife in playful earnestness

How she became so wise. "You talk," I said,

"Like one who has survived a thousand years,

And drunk the wisdom of a thousand lives."

"Who lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God,

Who giveth freely and upbraideth not,"

Was her reply.

"I never ask of God,"

I said. "So, while you take at second hand

His breathings to the artist, I will take

At second hand the wisdom that he gives

To you his teacher."

"Do you never pray?"

"Never," I answered her. "I cannot pray:

You know the reason. Never since the day

God shut his heart against my mother's prayer

Have I raised one petition, or been moved

To reverence."

Her long, dark lashes fell,

And from her eyes there dropped two precious tears

That bathed her folded hands. She pitied me,

With tenderness beyond the reach of words.

I did not seek her pity. I was proud,

And asked her if she blamed me.

"No," she said;

"I have no right to blame you, and no wish.

I marvel only that a man like you

Can hold so long the errors of a boy.

I've looked—with how much longing, words of mine

Can never tell—for reason to restore

That priceless thing which passion stole from you,

And looked in vain."

Though piqued by the reproach

Her words conveyed (unwittingly I knew),

I wished to learn where, in her theory

Of human life, my case had found a place;

So, bidding pride aback, I questioned her.

"You are so wise in other things," I said,

"And read so well God's dealings with his own,

Perhaps you can explain this mystery

That clouds my life."

"I know that God is good,"

She answered, "and, although my reason fail

To explicate the mystery that wraps

His providence, it does not shake my faith.

But this sad case of yours has seemed so plain,

That Reason well may spare the staff of Faith

To climb to its conclusions. You are loved,

My husband: can you tell your wife for what?"

"Oh! modesty! my dear; hem! modesty!

Spare me these blushes! I have not at hand

The printed catalogue of qualities

Which give you inspiration, and decline

The personal rehearsal."

"You mistake,"

She answered, smiling. "Not for modesty;

And as for blushes, they're not patent yet.

But frankly, soberly, I ask you this:

Have you a quality of heart or brain

Which makes you lovable, and in my eyes

A man to be admired, that was not born

Quick in your blood? Pray, have you anything

Which you did not inherit? Who to me

Furnished my husband? By what happy law

Was all that was the finest, noblest, best

In those who gave you life, bestowed on you?

You have your father's form, your father's brain:

You have your mother's eyes, your mother's heart.

Those twain produced a man for me to love,

Out of themselves. I am obliged to them

For the most precious good the round earth holds,

Transmitted by a law that slew them both.

It was not sin, or shame, for them to die

Just as they died. They passed with whiter hands

Up to The Throne than he who wantonly

Murders a sparrow. When your mother prayed

She prayed for the suspension of the law

By which from Eve, the mother of the race,

She had received the grace and loveliness

Which made her precious to your heart—the law

By which alone she could convey these gifts

To others of her blood. Your daughter's face

Is beautiful, her soul is pure and sweet,

By largess of this law. Could God subvert,

To meet her wish, though shaped in agony,

The law which, since the life of man began

In life of God, has kept the channel clear

For His own blood, that it might bless the last

Of all the generations as the first?

What could He more than give her liberty—

When reason lay in torture or in wreck,

And life was death—to part with stainless hand

The tie that held her from his loving breast?"

If God himself had dropped her words from heaven.

They had not reached with surer plummet-plunge

The depths of my conviction. I was dumb;

I opened not my mouth; but left her side,

And sought the crowded street. I felt that all

Delusions, subterfuges, self-deceits,

By which my soul had shut itself from God,

Were stripped away, and that no barrier

Was interposed between us which was not

My own hand's building. Never, nevermore,

Could I hold God in blame, or deem myself

A guiltless, injured creature. I could see

That I was hard, implacable, unjust;

And that by force of wilful choice I held

Myself from God; for no impulsion came

To seek his face and favor. Nay, I feared

And fought such incidence, as enemy

Of all my plans.

So it became thenceforth

A problem with me how to separate

My new conviction from my life—to hold

A revolutionizing truth within,

And hold it yet so loosely, it should be

Like a dumb alien in a mural town—

No guest, but an intruder, who might bide,

By law or grace, but win no domicile,

And hold no power.

When I returned, that night

My course was chosen, with such sense of guilt

I blushed before the calm, inquiring eyes

That met me at my threshhold; but the theme

Was dropped just there. My gentle mentor read

The secret of the struggle and the sin,

And left me to myself.

At the set time,

I entered on my task. The discipline

Of early years told feebly on my work,

For dissipation and disuse of power

Had brought me back to infancy again.

My will was weak, my patience was at fault,

And in my fretful helplessness, I stormed

And sighed by turns; yet still I held in force

Determination, as reserve of will;

And when I flinched or faltered, always fell

Back upon that, and saved my powers from rout.

Casting, recasting, till I found the germ

Of my conception putting forth its whorls

In orderly succession round the stem

Of my design, that straight and strong shot up

Toward inflorescence, my long work went on,

Till I was filled with satisfying joy.

This lasted for a little time, and then

There came reaction. I grew tired of it.

My verses were as meaningless and stale

As doggrel of the stalls. I marvelled much

That they could ever have beguiled my pride

Into self-gratulation, or done aught

But overwhelm me with contempt for them,

And the dull pen that wrote them.

I had hoped

To form and finish my projected work

Within, and by, myself,—to tease no ear

With fragmentary snatches of my song,

And call for no support from friendly praise

To reinforce my courage; but the stress

Of my disgust and my despair—the need,

Imperative and absolute, to brace myself

By some opinion borrowed for the nonce,

And bathe my spirit in the sympathy

Of some strong nature—mastered my intent,

And sent me for resource to her whose heart

Was ever open to my call.

She sat

Through the long hour in which I read to her,

Absorbed, entranced, as one who sits alone

Within a dim cathedral, and resigns

His spirit to the organ-theme, that mounts,

Or sinks in tremulous pauses, or sweeps out

On mighty pinions and with trumpet voice

Through labyrinthine harmonies, at last

Emerging, and through silver clouds of sound

Receding and receding, till it melts

In the abysses of the upper sky.

It was not needful she should say a word;

For in her glowing eyes and kindling face,

I caught the full assurance that my heart

Had yearned for; but she spoke her hearty praise

And when I asked her for her criticism,

Bestowed it with such modest deference

To my opinion, as to spare my pride;

Yet, with such subtle sense of harmony,

And insight of proportion, that I saw

That I should find no critic in the world

More competent or more severe. I said,

Gulping my pride: "Better this ordeal

In friendly hands, before the time of types,

Than afterward, in hands of enemies!"

So, from that reading, it was understood

Between us that, whenever I essayed

Revising and retouching, I should know

Her intimate impressions, and receive

Her frank suggestions. In this oversight

And constant interest of one whose mind

Was excellent and pure, and raised above

All motive to beguile me, I secured

New inspiration.

Weeks and months passed by

With gradient hopefulness, and strength renewed

At each renewal of the confidence

I had reposed in her; till I perceived

That I was living on her praise—that she

Held God's place in me and the multitude's.

And now, as I look back upon those days

Of difficult endeavor, I confess

That had she not been with me, I had failed—

Ay, foundered in mid-sea—my hope, my life,

The spoil of deep oblivion.

At last

The work was done—the labored volume closed.

"I cannot make it better," I exclaimed.

"I can write better, but, before I write,

I must have recognition in the voice

Of public praise. A good paymaster pays

When work is finished. Let him pay for this,

And I will work again; but, till he pay,

My leisure is my own, and I will wait."

"And if he grudge your wage?" suggested she

To whom I spoke.

"I shall be finished too."

Came then the proofs and latest polishing

Of words and phrases—work I shared with her

To whom I owed so much; and then the fear,

The deathly heart-fall, and the haunting dread

That go before exposure to the world

Of inmost life, and utmost reach of power

Toward revelation;—then the shrinking spell,

When morbid love of self awaits in pain

The verdict it has courted.

But at last

The book was out. My daughter's hand in mine—

Her careless feet, that thrilled with springing life,

Skipping the pavement—I walked down Broadway,

To ease the restlessness and cool the heat

That vexed my idle waiting. As we passed

A showy window, filled with costly books,

My little girl exclaimed: "Oh, father! See!

There is your name!"

Straight all the bravery

Within my veins, at one wild heart-thump, dropped,

And I was limp as water; but I paused,

And read the placard. It announced my book

In characters of flame, with adjectives

My daring publisher had filched, I think

From an old circus broadside.

"Well!" thought I—

Biting my lip—"I'm in the market now!

How much—O! rattling, roaring multitude!

O! selfish, cheating, lying multitude!

O! hawking, trading, delving multitude!—

How much for one man's hope, for one man's life?

What for his toil and pain?—his heart's red blood?

What for his brains and breeding? Oh, how much

For one who craves your praises with your pence,

And dies with your denial?"

I went in,

And bought my book—not doubting I was first

To give response to my apostrophe.

The smug old clerk, who found his length of ear

Convenient as a pencil-rack, and thus

Made nature's wrath proclaim the praise of trade,

Wrapped my dear bantling well; and, as he dropped

My dollar in his till, smiled languidly

Upon my little girl, and said to me—

To cheer me in my purchase—that the book

Was thought to be a deuced clever thing.

He never read such books; he had no time;

Indeed, he had no interest in them.

Still, other people had, and it was well,

For it helped trade along.

It was for him—

A vulgar fraction of the integral

We speak of as "the people," and "the world"—

I had been writing! Had he read my book,

And given it his praise, I should have been

Delighted, though I knew that his applause

Was worthless as his brooch. I was a fool

Undoubtedly; yet I could understand,

Better than e'er before, how separate

The artist is from such a soul as his—

What need of teachers and interpreters

To crumble in his pewter porringer

The rounded loaf, whose crust was adamant

To his weak fingers.

The next morning's press

Was purchased early, though I read in vain

To find my reputation. But at night,

My door-bell rang; and I received a note

From one who edited an evening print,

(I had dined with him at my publisher's),

Inclosing a review, and venturing

The hope that I should like it.

Cunning man!

He knew the tricks of trade, and was adroit.

My poem was "a revelation." I had "burst

Like thunder from a calm and cloudless sky."

Well, not to quote his language, this the drift:

A man of fortune, living at his ease,

But fond of manly effort, had sat down,

And turned his culture to supreme account;

And he—the editor—took on himself

To thank him on the world's behalf. Withal,

The poet had betrayed the continence

Of genius. He had held, undoubtedly,

The consciousness of power from early youth;

But, yielding never to the itch for print,

Had nursed and chastened and developed it,

Until his hand was strong, and swept his lyre

With magic of a master.

Followed here

Sage comments on the rathe and puny brood

Of poet-sucklings, who had rushed to type

Before their time—pale stems that spun their flowers

In the first sunshine, but, when Autumn came,

Were fruitless. It was pleasant, too, to see,

In such an age of sentimental cant,

One man who dared to hold up to the world

A creature of his brain, and say: "Look you!

This is my thought; and it shall stand alone.

It has no moral, bears no ministry

Of pious teaching, and makes no appeal

To sufferance or suffrage of the muffs

Who, in the pulpit or the press, prepare

The nation's pap. The fiery-footed barb

That pounds the pampas, and the lily-bells

That hang above the brooks, present the world

With no apology for being there,

And no attempt to justify themselves

In uselessness. It is enough for God

That they are beautiful, and hold his thought

In fine embodiment; and it shall be

Enough for me that, in this book of mine,

I have created somewhat that is strong

And beautiful, which, if it profit,—well:

If not, 'tis no less strong and beautiful,

And holds its being by no feebler right."

Ay, it was glorious to find one man

Who piled no packs upon his Pegasus,

Nor chained him to a rag-cart, loaded down

With moral frippery, and strings of bells

To call the people to their windows.

Then

There followed extracts, with a change of type

To mark the places where the editor

Had caught a fancy hiding, which he feared

Might slip detection under slower eyes

Than those he carried; or to emphasize

Felicities of diction that were stiff

In Roman verticals, but grew divine

At the Italic angle; then apology,

Profoundly humble, to his patrons all

For quoting at such length, and one to me

For quoting anything, and deep regrets,

In quite a general way, that lack of space

Forbade a reproduction of the book

From title-page to tail-piece, winding up

With counsel to all lovers of pure art,

Patrons of genius, all Americans,

All friends of cis-Atlantic literature,

To buy the book, and read it for themselves.

I drank the whole, at one long, luscious draught;

Tipping the tankard high, that I might see

My features at the bottom, and regale

My pride, after my palate. Then I tossed

The paper to my wife, and bade her read.

I watched her while she read, but failed to find

The sympathy of pleasure in her face

I had expected. Finishing at last,

She raised her eyes, and, fixing them on me,

Said thoughtfully: "You like this, I suspect."

"Well, truly!" I responded, "since it seems

To be the first instalment of the wage

Which you suggested might come grudgingly.

Ay, it is sweet to me. I know it fails

In nice discrimination,—that it slurs

Defects which I perceive as well as you;

But it is kind, and places in best light

Such excellences as we both may find—

May claim, indeed."

"And yet, it is a lie,

Or what the editor would call 'a puff,'

From first to last. The 'continence,' my dear,

'Of genius!' What of that? And what about

The 'manly effort,' for whose exercise

He thanked you on the world's behalf? And so

Your nursing, chastening and developing

Of power!—Pray what of these?"

"Oh! wife!" I said,

"Don't spoil it all! Be pitiful, my love!

I am a baby—granted: so I need

The touch of tender hands, and something sweet

To keep me happy."

"Babies take a bath,

Sometimes, from which the hand of warmest love

Filches the chill, and you must have one dash,"

She answered me, "to close your complement.

The weakest spot in all your book, he found

With a quick instinct; and on that he spent

His sharpest force and finest rhetoric,

Shoring and bracing it on every side

With bold assumptions and affirmatives,

To blind the eyes of novices, and scare

With fierce forestalment all the critic-quills

Now bristling for their chance. He saw at once

Your poem had no mission, save, perhaps,

The tickle of the taste, and that it bore

Upon its glowing gold small food for life.

He saw just there the point to be attacked;

And there threw up his earth-works, and spread out

His thorned abattis. He was very kind

Undoubtedly, and very cunning, too;

For well he knew that there are earnest souls

In the broad world, who claim that highest art

Is highest ministry to human need;

And that the artist has no Christian right

To prostitute his art to selfish ends,

Or make it vehicle alone of plums

For the world's pudding."

"These will speak in time,"

Responded I; "but they have not the ear

Of the broad world, I think. The Christian right

Of which you speak is hardly recognized

Among the multitude, or by the guild

In which I claim a place. The sectaries

Who furnish folios, quartos, magazines,

To the religious few, are limited

In influence; and these, my wife, are all

I have to fear;—nay, could I but arouse

Their bitter enmity, I might receive

Such superflux of praise and patronage

As would o'erwhelm my sweetly Christian wife

With shame and misery. But we shall see;

And, in the meantime, let us be content

That, if one man shall praise me overmuch,

Ten, at the least, will fail to render me

Befitting justice."

As the days went on,

Reviews and notices came pouring in.

I was notorious, at least; and fame,

I whispered comfortably to myself,

Is only notoriety turned gray,

With less of fire, if more of steadiness.

The adverse verdicts were not numerous;

And these were rendered, as I fancied then,

By sanctimonious fools who deemed profane

All verse outside their thumb-worn hymnodies.

My book received the rattling fusilade

Of all the dailies: then the artillery

Of the hebdomadals, whose noisy shells,

Though timed by fuse to burst on Saturday,

Exploded at the middle of the week;

At last, a hundred-pounder quarterly

Gave it a single missive from its mask

Of far and dark impersonality.

The smoke cleared up, and still my colors

And still my book stood proudly in the sun,

Nor breached nor battered.

I had won a place

That I was sure of. All had said of me

That I was "brilliant:" was not that enough?

The petty pesterers, with card and stamp,

Who hunt for autographs, were after me,

In packages by post; and idle men

Held me at corners by the button-hole,

And introduced me to their friends. I dined

With meek-eyed men, whose literary wives

Were dying all to know me, as they said;

And the lyceums, quick at scent and sight—

Watching the jungles for a lion—all

Courted the delectation of my roar

Upon their platforms, pledging to my hand

(With city reference to stanchest names),

Such honoraria as would have been

The lion's share of profits. These were straws;

But they had surer fingers for the wind

Than withes or weathercocks.

The book sold well

My publisher (who published at my risk,

And first put on the airs of one who stooped

To grant a favor), brimmed and overflowed

With courtesy; and ere a year was gone,

Became importunate for something more.

This was his plea: I owed it to myself

To write again. The time to make one's hay

Is when the sun shines: time to write one's books

Is when the public humor turns to them.

The public would forget me in a year,

And seek another idol; or, meanwhile,

Another writer might usurp my throne,

And I be hooted from my own domain

As a pretender. Then the market's maw

Was greedy for my poems. Just how long

The appetite would last, he could not tell,

For appetite is subject of caprice,

And never lasts too long.

The man was wise,

I plainly saw, and gave me the results

Of observation and experience.

I took his hint, accepting with a pang

The truths that came with it: for instance, these:—

That he who speaks for praise of those who live,

Must keep himself before his audience,

Nor look for "bravas," cheers, and cries of "hear!

And clap of hands and stamp of feet, except

With fresh occasion; that applause of crowds,

Though fierce, runs never to the chronic stage;

That good paymasters, having paid for work

The doer's price, expect receipt in full

At even date; and that if I would keep

My place, as grand purveyor to the greed

For novelties of literary art,

My viands must be sapid, and abound

With change, to wake or whet the appetite

I sought to feed.

I say I took his hint.

Bestowed in selfishness, without a doubt,

Though in my interest. For ten long years

It was the basis of my policy.

I poured my poems with redundancy

Upon the world, and won redundant meed.

If I gave much, the world was generous,

Repaying more than justice: but, at last,

Tired and disgusted, I laid down my pen.

I knew my work would not outlast my life,

That the enchantments which had wreathed themselves

Around my name were withering away,

With every breath of fragrance they exhaled;

And that, too soon, the active brain and hand

Whose skill had conjured them, would faint and fail

Under the press of weariness and years.

My reputation piqued me. None believed

That it was in me to write otherwise

Than I had written. All the world had laughed,

Or shaken its wise head, had I essayed

A work beyond the round of brilliancies

In which my pen had revelled, and for which

It gave such princely guerdon. If I looked,

Or came to look, with measureless contempt

On those who gave with such munificence

The boon I sought, I had provoking cause.

I fooled them all with patent worthlessness,

And they insisted I should fool them still.

The wisdom of a whole decade had failed

To teach them that the thing my hand had done

Was not worth doing.

More and worse than this;

I found my character and self-respect

Eroded by the canker of conceit,

Poisoned by jealousy, and made the prey

Of meanest passions. Harlequins in mask,

Who live upon the laughter of the throng

That crowds their reeking amphitheatres;

Light-footed dancing-girls, who sell their grace

To gaping lechers of the pit, to win

That which shall feed their shameless vanity;

The mimics of the buskin—baser still,

The mimics of the negro—minstrel-bands.

With capital of corks and castanets

And threadbare jests—Ah! who and what was I

But brother of all these—in higher walk,

But brother in the motive of my life,

In jealousy, in recompense for toil,

And, last, in destiny?

My wife had caught

Stray silver in her hair in these long years;

And the sweet maiden springing from our lives

Had grown to womanhood. In my pursuits,

Which drank my time and my vitality,

I had neglected them. I worked at home,

But lived in other scenes, for other lives,

Or, rather, for my own; and though my pride

Shrank from the deed, I had the tardy grace

To call them to me, and confess my shame,

And beg for their forgiveness.

Once again—

All explanations passed—I sat beside

My faithful wife, and canvassed as of old

New plans of life. I found her still the same

In purpose and in magnanimity;

For she dealt no upbraidings and no blame;

Cast in my teeth no old-time prophecies

Of failure; felt no triumph which rejoiced

To mock me with the words, "I told you so,"

Calmly she sat, and tried, with gentlest speech,

To heal the bruises of my fall; to wake

A better feeling in me toward the world,

And soothe my morbid self-contempt.

The world,

She said, is apt to take a public man

At his own estimate, and yield him place

According to his choice. I had essayed

To please the world, and gather in its praise;

And, certainly, the world was pleased with me,

And had not stinted me in its return

Of plauditory payment. As the world

Had taken me according to my rate,

And filled my wish, it had a valid claim

On my good nature.

Then, beyond all this,

The world was not a fool. Those books of mine,

That I had come to look upon as trash,

Were not all trash. My motive had been poor,

And that had vitiated them for me;

But there was much in them that yielded strength

To struggling souls, and, to the wounded, balm.

Indeed, she had been helped by them, herself.

They were all pure; they made no foul appeal

To baseness and brutality; they had

An element of gentle chivalry,

Such as must have a place in any man

Shrinking with sensitiveness, like myself,

From a fine reputation, scorning it

For motive which had won it.

Words like these,

From lips like hers, were needed medicine.

They clarified my weak and jaundiced sight,

And helped to juster vision of the world,

And of myself. But there was no return

Of the old greed; and fame, which I had learned

To be an entity quite different

From my conceit of it in other days,

Was something much too far and nebulous

To be my star of life.

"You have some plan?"—

Statement and query in same words, which fell

From lips that sought to rehabilitate

My will and self-respect.

"I have," I said.

"Else you were dead," responded she. "To live,

Men must have plans. When these die out of men

They crumble into chaos, or relapse

Into inanity. Will you reveal

These plans of yours to me?"

"Ay, if I can,"

I answered her; "but first I must reveal

The base on which I build them. I have tried

To find the occasion of my discontent,

And find it, as I think, just here; in quest

Of popularity, I have become

Untrue both to myself and to my art.

I have not dared to speak the royal truth

For fear of censure; I have been a slave

To men's opinions. What is best in me

Has been debauched by the pursuit of praise

As life's best prize. Conviction, sentiment,

All love and hate, all sense of right and wrong,

I have held in abeyance, or compelled

To work in menial subservience

To my grand purpose. If my sentiment

Or my conviction were but popular,

It flowed in hearty numbers: otherwise,

It slept in silence.

"Now as to my art;

I find that it has suffered like myself,

And suffered from same cause. My verse has been

Shaped evermore to meet the people's thought.

That which was highest, grandest in my art

I have not reached, and have not tried to reach

I have but touched the surfaces of things

That meet the common vision; and my art

Has only aimed to clothe them gracefully

With fancy's gaudy fabrics, or portray

Their patent beauties and deformities.

Above the people in my gift and art,

Both gift and art have had a downward trend

And both are prostitute.

"Discarding praise

As motive of my labor, I confess

My sins against my art, and so, henceforth,

As to my goddess, give myself to her.

The chivalry which you are pleased to note

In me and works of mine, turns loyally

To her and to her service. Nevermore

Shall pen of mine demean itself by work

That serves not first, and with supreme intent,

The art whose slave it is."

"I understand,

I think, the basis of your plan," she said;

"And e'en the plan itself. You now propose

To write without remotest reference

To the world's wishes, prejudices, needs,

Or e'en the world's opinions,—quite content

If the world find aught in you to applaud;

Quite as content if it condemn. With full

Expression of yourself in finest terms

And noblest forms of art, so far as God

Has made you masterful, you give yourself

Up to yourself and to your art. Is this

Fair statement of your purpose?"

"Not unfair,"

I answered. "Tell me what you think of it."

"Suppose," she said, "that all the artist-souls

That God has made since time and art began

Had acted on your theory: suppose

In architecture, picture, poetry,

Naught had found utterance but works that sprang

To satisfy the worker, and reveal

That bundle of ideas which, to him,

Is constituted art; but which, in truth,

Is figment of his fancy, or his thought,—

His creature, made his God—say where were all

The temples, palaces and homes of men;

The galleries that blaze with history,

Or bloom with landscape, or look down

With smile of changeless love or loveliness

Into the hearts of men? And where were all

The poems that give measure to their praise,

Voice to their aspirations, forms of light

To homely facts and features of their life,

Enveloping this plain, prosaic world

In an ideal atmosphere, in which

Fair angels come and go? All gifts of men

Were made for use, and made for highest use,

If highest use be service of one's self,

And highest standard, one's embodiment

Of dogmas, theories and thoughts of art,

As art's identity, then are you right;

But if a higher use of gift and art

Be service of mankind, and higher rule

God's regal truth, revealed in words or worlds,

And verified by life, then are you wrong."

"But art?"—responded I—"you do not mean

That art is nothing but a thing of thought,

Or, less than that, of fancy? Nay, I claim

That it is somewhat—a grand entity—

An organism of lofty principles,

Informed with subtlest life, and clothed upon

With usage and tradition of the men

Who, working in those sunny provinces

Where it holds eminent domain, have brought

To build its temple and adorn its walls

The usufruct of countless lives. So far

Is art from being creature of man's thought

That it is subject of his knowledge—stands

In mighty mystery, and challenges

The study of the world; rules noblest minds

Like law or like religion; is a power

To which the proudest artist-spirits bow

With humblest homage. Is astronomy

The creature of man's thought? Is chemistry?

Yet these hold not, in this our universe,

A form more definite, nor yet a place

In human knowledge more beyond dispute,

Than art itself. To this embodiment

Of theory—of dogmas, if you will—

This body aggregate of truth revealed

In growing light of ages to the eyes

Touched to perception, I devote my life."

"Nay, you're too fast," she said: "let alchemy

And old astrology present your thought.

These were somewhat; these were grand entities;

But they went out like candles in thin air

When knowledge came. The sciences are things

Of law, of force, relations, measurements,

Affinities and combinations, all

The definite, demonstrable effects

Of first and second causes. Between these

And men's opinions, braced by usages,

The space is wide. The thing which you call art

Is anything but definite in form,

Or fixed in law. It has as many shapes

As worshippers. The world has many books,

Written by earnest men, about this art;

But having read them, we are no more wise

Than he whose observation of the sun

Is taken by kaleidoscope. The more

He sees in it, the more he is confused.

The sun works, doubtless, many fine effects

With what he sees, but he sees not the sun."

"But art is art," I said. "You'd cheat my sense.

And mock my reason too. Ay, art is art.

Things must have being that have history."

Then she: "Yes, politics has history,

And therefore has a being,—has, in truth,

Just such a being as I grant to art—

A being of opinions. Every state

Has origin and ends of government

Peculiarly its own, and so, from these,

Constructs its theory of politics,

And holds this theory against the world;

And holds it well. There is no fixedness

Or form of politics for all mankind;

And there is none of art. Each artist-soul

Is its own law; and he who dares to bring

From work of other man, to lay on yours,

His square and compass—thus declaring him

The pattern man—and tells, by him, you lack

Just so much here, or wander so much there,

Thereby confesses just how much he lacks

Of wisdom and plain sense. For every man

Has special gift of power and end of life.

No man is great who lives by other law

Than that which wrapped his genius at his birth.

The Lind is great because she is the Lind,

And not the Malibran. Recorded art

Is yours to study—e'en to imitate,

In education—imitate or shun,

As the case warrants; but it has destroyed,

Or toned to commonplace, more gifts of God

Than it has ever fanned to life or fed.

Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks

Makes no discoveries. Show me the man

Who, leaving God and nature and himself,

Sits at the feet of masters, stuffs his brain

With maxims, notions, usages and rules,

And yields his fancy up to leading-strings,

And I shall see a man who never did

A deed worth doing. So, in the name of art—

Nay, in the name of God—do no such thing

As smutch your knees by bowing at a shrine,

Whose doubtful deity, in midst of dust,

Sits in the cast-off robes of devotees,

And lives on broken victuals!"

"Drive, my dear!

Drive on, and over me! You're on the old

High-stepping horse to-night; so give him rein,

For exercise is good," I said, in mirth.

"You sit your courser finely. I confess

I'm very proud of you, and too much pleased

With your accomplishments to check your speed.

Drive on, my love! drive on!"

"I thank you, sir

No one so gracious as your grudging man

Under compulsion! With your kind consent

I'll ride a little further," she replied,—

"For I enjoy it quite as much as you—

The more because you've given me little chance

In these last years.... Now, soberly, this art

Of which we talk so much, without the power

To tell exactly what we understand

By the hack term—suppose we take the word,

And try to find its meaning. You recall

Old John who dressed the borders in our court:

You called him, hired him, told him what to do.

He and his rake stood interposed between

You and your work. You chose his skilful hands,

Endowing them with pay, or pledge of pay,

And set him at his labor. Now suppose

Old John had had a philosophic turn

After you left him, and had thought like this:

'I am called here to do a certain work—

My rake tells what; and he who called me here

Has given me the motive for the job.

The work is plain. These borders are to be

Levelled and cleaned of weeds: my hand and rake

Are fitted for the service;—this my art;

And it is first of all the arts. There's none

More ancient, useful, worshipful, indeed,

Than agriculture. Adam practised it;

Poets have sung its praises; and the great

Of every age have loved and honored it.

This art is greater than the man I serve,

And greater than his borders. Therefore I

Will serve my art, and let the borders lie,

And my employer whistle. True to that,

And to myself, it matters not to me

What weeds may grow, or what the master think

Of my proceeding!'

"So, intent on this,

He hangs his rake upon your garden wall,

And steals your clematis, with which to wind

The handle upward; then o'erfills his hands

With roses and geraniums, and weaves

Their beauty into laurel, for a crown

For his slim god, completing his devoir

By buttering the teeth, and kneeling down

In abject homage. Pray, what would you say,

At close of day, when you should go to see

Your untouched borders, and your gardener

At genuflexion, with your mignonette

In every button-hole? Remember, now,

He has been true to art and to himself,

According to his notion; nor forget

To take along a dollar for his hire,

Which he expects, of course! What would you say?"

"Oh, don't mind that: you've reached your 'fifthly' now,

And here the 'application' comes," I said.

"I think," responded she, with an arch smile,

"The application's needless: but you men

Are so obtuse, when will is in the way,

That I will do your bidding. Every gift

That God bestows on men holds in itself

The secret of its office, like the rake

The gardener wields. The rake was made to till—

Was fashioned, head and handle, for just that;

And if, by grace of God, you hold a gift

So fashioned and adapted, that it stands

In like relation of supremest use

To life of men, the office of your gift

Has perfect definition. Gift like this

Is yours, my husband. In your facile hands

God placed it for the service of himself,

In service of your kind. Taking this gift,

And using it for God and for the world,

In your own way, and in your own best way;

Seeking for light and knowledge everywhere

To guide your careful hand; and opening wide

To spiritual influx all your soul,

That so your master may breathe into you,

And breathe his great life through you, in such forms

Of pure presentment as he gives you skill

To build withal—that's all of art—for you.

Art is an instrument, and not an end—

A servant, not a master, nor a God

To be bowed down to. Shall we worship rakes?

Honor of art, by him whose work is art,

Is a fine passion; but he honors most

Whose use and end are best."

"Use! Use! Use!"

I cried impatiently;—"nothing but use!

As if God never made a violet,

Or hung a harebell, or in kindling gold

Garnished a sunset, or upreared the arch

Of a bright rainbow, or endowed a world—

A universe, indeed—stars, firmament,

The vastitudes of forest and of sea,

Swift brooks and sweeping rivers, virid meads

And fluff of breezy hills—with tints that range

The scale of spectral beauty, till they leave

No glint or glory of the changeful light

Without a revelation! Is this use—

I beg your pardon, love: you say 'this art'—

The sum and end of art? If it be so,

Then God's no artist. Are the crystal brooks

Sweeter for singing to the thirsty brutes

That dip their beaded muzzles in the foam?

Burns the tree better that its leaves are green?

Sleeps the sun sounder under canopy

Of gold or rose?"

"Yet beauty has its use,"

Responded she. "Whatever elevates

Inspires, refreshes, any human soul,

Is useful to that soul. Beauty has use

For you and me. The dainty violet

Blooms in our thought, and sheds its fragrance there

And we are gainers through its ministry.

All God's great values wear the drapery

That most becomes them. Beauty may, in truth,

Be incident of art and not be end—

Its form, condition, features, dress, and still

The humblest value of the things of art.

This truth obtains in all God's artistry.

Does God make beauty for himself, alone?

He is, and holds, all beauty. Has he need

To kindle rushes that he may behold

The glory of his thoughts? or need to use

His thoughts as plasms for the amorphous clay

That he may study models? For an end

Outside himself, he ever speaks himself;

And end, with him, is use."

"Well, I confess

There's truth in what you utter," I replied;—

"A modicum of truth, at least; and still

There's something more which this our subtle talk

Has failed to give us. I will not affirm

That art, recorded in its thousand forms,

And clothed with usages, traditions, rules,—

The thing of history—the mighty pile

Of drift that sweep of ages has brought down

To heap the puzzled present—is the sum

And substance of all art. I will not claim—

Nay, mark me now—I will not even claim

That beauty is art's end, or has its end

Within itself. Our tedious colloquy

Has cleared away the rubbish from my thought,

And given me cleaner vision. I can see

Before, around me, underneath, above,

The great unrealized; and while I bow

To the traditions and the things of art,

And hold my theories, I find myself

Inspired supremely by the Possible

That calls for revelation—by the forms

That sleep imprisoned in the snowy arms

Of still unquarried truth, or stretch their hands

At sound of sledge and drill and booming fire,

Imploring for release. I turn from men,

And stretch my hands toward these. I feel—I know—

That there are mighty myriads waiting there,

And listening for my steps. Suppose my age

Should fail to give them welcome: ay, suppose

They may not help a man to coin a dime

Or cook a dinner: they will fare as well

As much of God's truth fares, though clothed in forms

Divinely chosen. Does God ever stint

His utterance because no creature hears?

Is it a grand and goodly thing, to spend

Brave life and precious treasure in a search

For palpitating water at the pole,

That so the sum of knowledge may be swelled,

Though pearls are not increased; and something less

To probe the Possible in art, or sit

Through months of dreary dark to catch a glimpse

Of the live truth that quivers with the jar

Of movement at its axle? Is it good

To garner gain beyond the present need,

Won by excursive commerce in all seas;

And something less to pile redundantly

The spoil of thought?"

"These latest words of yours,"

She answered musingly, "impress me much;

And yet, I think I see where they will lead,

Or, rather, fail to lead. Your fantasy

Is beautiful but vague. The Possible

Is a vast ocean, from which one poor soul,

With its slight oars, can float but flimsy freight;

Yet I would help your courage, for I see

Where your sole motive lies. Go on, and prove

Whether your scheme or mine holds more of good;

And take my blessing with you."

Then she rose,

And kissed my forehead. Looking in her face,

By the sharp light that touched her, I was thrilled

By her flushed cheeks and strangely lustrous eyes.

She spoke not; but I heard the sigh she breathed—

The long-drawn, weary sigh—as she retired;

And then the Possible, which had inspired

So wondrously my hope, drooped low around,

And filled me with foreboding.

Had her life

Been chilled by my neglect? Was it on wane?

Could she be lost to me? Oh! then I felt,

As I had never felt before, how mean

Beside one true affection is the best

Of all earth's prizes, and how little worth

The world would be without her love—herself!

But sleep refreshed her, and next morn she sat

At our bright board, in her accustomed place;

And sunlight was not sweeter than her smile,

Or cheerfuller. My quick fears died away;

And though I saw that she had lost the fire

Of her young life, I comforted myself

With thinking that it was the same with me—

The sure result of years.

My time I gave

To my new passion, rioting at large

In the fresh realm of fancy and of thought

To which the passion bore me, and from which

I strove to gather for embodiment

Material of art.

The more I dreamed,

The broader grew my dream. The further on

My footsteps pushed, the brighter grew the light;

Till, half in terror, half in reverence,

I learned that I had broached the Infinite!

I had not thought my Possible could bear

Such name as this, or wear such attribute;

And shrank befitting distance from the front

Of awful secrets, hid in awful flame,

That scorched and scared me.

So, more humble grown,

And less adventurous, I chose, at last,

My theme and vehicle of song, and wrote.

My faculties, grown strong and keen by use,

Bent to their task with earnest faithfulness,

And glowed with high endeavor. All of power

I had within me flowed into my hand;

And learning, language—all my life's resource—

Lay close around my enterprise, and poured

Their hoarded wealth of imagery and words

Faster than I could use it. For long weeks,

My ardent labor crowded all my days,

Invaded sleep, and haunted e'en my dreams:

And then the work was done.

I left it there,

And sought for recreative rest in scenes

That once had charmed me—in society

Where I was welcome: but the common talk

Of daily news—of politics and trade—

Was senseless as the chatter of the jays

In autumn forests. No refreshing balm

Came to me in the sympathy of men.

In my retirement, I had left the world

To go its way; and it had gone its way,

And left me hopelessly.

I told my wife

Of my dissatisfaction and disgust,

But found small comfort in her words. She said:

"The world is wide, and woman's vision short;

But I have never seen a man who turned

His efforts from his kind, and failed to spoil

All men for him—himself, indeed, for them;

And he who gives nor sympathy nor aid

To the poor race from which he seeks such boon

Must be rejoiced if it be generous;

Content, if it be just. Society

Is a grand scheme of service and return.

We give and take; and he who gives the most,

In ways directest, wins the best reward."

By purpose, I closed eyes upon my work

For many weeks, resisting every day

The impulse to review the glowing dream

My fancy had engendered: for I wished

To go with faculty and fancy cooled

To its perusal. I had strong desire,

So far as in me lay, to see the work

With the world's eyes, for reasons—ah! I shrink

From writing them! All men are sometimes weak,

And some are inconsistent with their wills.

If I were one of these, think not I failed

To justify my weakness to myself,

In ways that saved my pride.

Yet this was true;

I had an honest wish to learn how far

My work of heat had power to re-inspire

The soul that wrought it, and how well my verse

Had clothed and kept the creature of my thought;

For memory still retained the loveliness

That filled the fresh conceit.

When, in good time.

Rest and diversion had performed their work,

And the long fever of my brain was gone,

I broached my feast, first making fast my door.

That so no eye should mark my greedy joy

Or my grimaces,—doubtful of the fate

That waited expectation.

It were vain

To try, in these tame words, to paint the pang,

The faintness and the chill, which overwhelmed

My disappointed heart. My welded thoughts

Which, in their whitest heat, had bent and bound

My language to themselves, imparting grace

To stiffest words, and meanings fresh and fine

To simplest phrases, interfusing all

With their own ardency, and shining through

With smoothly rounded beauty, lay in heaps

Of cold, unmeaning ugliness. My words

Had shrunk to old proportions, and stood out

In hard, stiff angles, challenging a guess

Of what they covered.

Meaningless to me,

Who knew the meaning that had once informed

Its faithless numbers, what way could I hope

That, to my own, or any future age,

My work should speak its full significance?

My latest child, begot in manly joy,

Conceived in purity, and born in toil,

Lay dead before me,—dead, and in the shroud

My hopeful hands had woven and bedecked

To be its chrisom.

Then the first I learned

Where language finds its bound—learned that beyond

The range of human commerce, save by force,

It never moves, nor lingers in the realm

It thus invades, a moment, if the voice

Of human commerce speak not the demand;—

That language is a thing of use;—that thought

Which seeks a revelation, first must seek

Adjustment in the scale of human need,

Or find no fitting vehicle.

And more:

That the great Possible which lies outside

The range of commerce is identical

With the stupendous Infinite of God,

Which only comes in glimpses, or in hints

Of vague significance, so dim, so vast,

That subtlest, most prehensile language, shrinks

From plucking of its robes, the while they sweep

The perfumed air!

I closed my manuscript,

And locked it in my desk. Then stealing forth,

I sought the bustle of the street, to drown

In the great roar of careless toil, the pain

That brings despair. My last resource was gone;

And as I brooded o'er the awful blank

Of hopeless life that waited for my steps,

A fear which I had feared to entertain

Found entrance to my heart, and held it still,

Almost to bursting.

Not alone my life

Was sliding from me; for my better life,

My pearl of price, the jewel in my crown,

My wife Kathrina, growing lovelier

With every passing day, arose each morn

From wasting dreams to paler loveliness,

And sank in growing weariness each night,

And hotter hectic, to her welcome bed.

Her bed! The sweet, the precious nuptial bed!

Bed sanctified by love! Bed blest of God

With fruit immortal! Bed too soon to be

Crowned with the glory of a Christian death!

Ah God! How it brought back the agony,

And the rebellious hate of other years—

The hopeless struggle of my will with Him

Whose will is law!

Thus torn with mingled thought:

Of fear, despair and spite, I wore away

Miles of wild wandering about the streets,

Till weariness at last compelled my feet

To drag me to my home.

Before my door

Stood the familiar chair of one whose call

Was ominous of ill. My heart grew sick

With flutter of foreboding and foredoom;

But in swift silence I flew up the steps,

And, blind with stifled frenzy, reached the side

Of my poor wife. She smiled at seeing me,

But I could only kneel, and bathe her hands

With tears and kisses. In her gentle breast—

True home of love, and love and home to me—

The blood had burst its walls, and flowed in flame

From lips it left in ashes.

In her smile

Of perfect trustfulness, I caught first glimpse

Of that aureola of fadeless light

Which spans my lonely couch, and kindles hope

That when my time shall come to follow her,

My spirit may go out, enwreathed and wrapped

By the familiar glory, which to-night

Shall brood o'er all my vigils and my dreams!

DESPAIR.

Ah! what is so dead as a perished delight!

Or a passion outlived! or a scheme overthrown!

Save the bankrupt heart it has left in its flight,

Still as quick as the eye, but as cold as a stone!

The honey-bee hoards for its winter-long need,

The treasure it gathers in joy from the flowers;

And drinks in each sip of its silvery mead

The flavor and flush of the sweet summer hours.

But a pleasure expires at its earliest breath:

No labor can hoard it, no cunning can save;

For the song of its life is the sigh of its death,

And the sense it has thrilled is its shroud and its grave.

Ah! what is our love, with its tincture of lust,

And its pleasure that pains us and pain that endears,

But joy in an armful of beautiful dust

That crumbles, and flies on the wings of the years?

And what is ambition for glory and power,

But desire to be reckoned the uppermost fool

Of a million of fools, for a pitiful hour,

And be cursed for a tyrant, or kicked for a tool?

Nay, what is the noblest that art can achieve,

But to conjure a vision of light to the eyes,

That will pale ere we paint it, and pall ere we leave

On the heart it betrays and the hand it defies?

We love, and we long with an infinite greed

For a love that will fill our deep longing, in vain;

The cup that we drink of is pleasant, indeed,

Yet it holds but a drop of the heavenly rain.

We plan for our powers the divinest we can;

We do with our powers the supremest we may;

And, winning or losing, for labor and plan

The best that we garner is—rest and decay!

Content—satisfaction—who wins them? Look down!

They are held without thought by the dolts and the drones:

'Tis the slave who in carelessness carries the crown;

And the hovels have kinglier men than the thrones.

The maid sings of love to the hum of her wheel;

And her lover responds as he follows his team;

They wed, and their children come quickly to seal

In fulfilment the pledge of their loftiest dream.

With humblest ambitions and homeliest fare,

Contented, though toiling, they travel abreast,

Till the kind hand of death lifts their burden of care,

And they sink, in the faith of their fathers, to rest.

Did I beg to be born? Did I seek to exist?

Did I bargain for promptings to loftier gains?

Did I ask for a brain, with contempt of the fist

That could win a reward for its labor and pains?

Was it kind—the strong promise that girded my youth?

Was it good—the endowment of motive and skill?

Was it well to succeed, when success was, in truth,

But the saddest of failure? Make answer, who will!

Do I rave without reason? Why, look you, I pray!

I have won all I sought of the highest and best;

But it brings me no guerdon; and hopeless, to-day,

I am poorer than when I set out on the quest.

Oh! emptiness! Life, what art thou but a lie,

Which I greeted and honored with hopefullest trust?

Bah! the beautiful apples that tempted my eye

Break dead on my tongue into ashes and dust!

"A Father who loves all the children of men"?

"A future to fill all these bottomless gaps"?

But one life has failed: can I fasten again

With my faith and my hope to a specious Perhaps!

O! man who begot me! O! woman who bore!

Why, why did you call me to being and breath?

With ruin behind me, and darkness before,

I have nothing to long for, or live for, but death!

PART IV.

CONSUMMATION.

A guest was in my house—a guest unbid—

Who stayed without a welcome from his host,—

So loathed and hated, on such errand bent,

And armed with such resistless power of ill,

I dared not look him in the face. I heard

His tireless footsteps in the lonely halls,

In the chill hours of night; and, in the day,

They climbed the stairs, or loitered through the rooms

With lawless freedom. Ever when I turned

I caught a glimpse of him. His shadow stalked

Between me and the light, and fled before

My restless feet, or followed close behind.

Whene'er I bent above the couch that held

My fading wife, though looking not, I knew

That he was bending from the other side,

And mocking me.

Familiar grown, at last,

He came more closely—came and sat with me

Through hours of revery; or, as I paced

My dimly-lighted room, slipped his lank arm

Through mine, and whispered in my shrinking ear

Such fearful words as made me sick and cold.

He took the vacant station at my board,

Sitting where she had sat, and mixed my cup

With poisoned waters, saying in low tones

That none but I could hear:

"This little room,

Where you have breakfasted and dined and supped,

And laughed and chatted in the days gone by,

Will be a lonely place when we are gone.

Those roses at the window, that were wont

To bloom so freely with the lady's care,

Already miss her touch. That ivy-vine

Has grown a yard since it was tied, and needs

A training hand."

Rising with bitter tears

To flee his presence, he arose with me,

And wandered through the rooms.

"This casket here"—

I heard him say: "Suppose we loose the clasp.

These are her jewels—pretty gifts of yours.

There is a diamond: there a string of pearls.

That paly opal holds a mellowed fire

Which minds me of the mistress, whose bright soul,

Glows through the lucent whiteness of her face

With lambent flicker. These are legacies:

She will not wear them more. Her taste and mine

Are one in this, that both of us love flowers.

Ay, she shall have them, too, some pleasant day,

When she goes forth with me!

"So? what is this?

Her wardrobe! Let the door be opened wide!

This musk, so blent with scent of violets,

Revives one. You remember when she wore

That lavender?—a very pretty silk!

Here is a moire antique. Ah! yes—I see!

You did not like her in it. 'Twas too old,

And too suggestive of the dowager.

There is your favorite—that glossy blue—

The sweet tint stolen from the skies of June—

But she is done with it. I wonder who

Will wear it, when your grief shall find a pause!

Your daughter—possibly? ... You shiver, sir!

Is it the velvet? Like a pall, you think!

Well, close the door!

"Those slippers on the rug:

The time will come when you will kiss their soles

For the dear life that pressed them. Their rosettes

Will be more redolent than roses then.

You did not know how much you loved your wife?

I thought so!

"This way! Let us take our stand

Beside her bed. Not quite so beautiful

To your fond eyes as when she was a bride,

Though still a lovely woman! Seems it strange

That she is yours no longer?—that her hand

Is given to another—to the one

For whom she has been waiting all her life,

And ready all her life? Your power is gone

To punish rivals. There you stand and weep,

But dare not lift a finger, while with smiles

And kindly welcome she extends her hands

To greet her long-expected friend. She knows

Where I will take her—to what city of God,

What palace there, and what companionship.

She knows what robes will drape her loveliness,

What flowers bedeck her hair, and rise and fall

Upon the pulses of her happy breast.

And you, poor man! with all your jealous pride,

Have learned that she would turn again to you,

And to your food and furniture of life,

With disappointment.

"Ay, she pities you—

Loves you, indeed; but there is One she loves

With holier passion, and with more entire

And gladder self-surrender. She will go—

You know that she will go—and go with joy;

And you begin to see how poor and mean,

When placed beside her joy, are all your gifts,

And all that you have won by them.

"Poor man!

Weeping again! Well, if it comfort you,

Rain your salt tears upon her waxen hands,

And kiss them dry at leisure! Press her lips,

Hot with the hectic! Lay your cold, wet cheek

Against the burning scarlet of her own:

Only remember that she is not yours,

And that your paroxysms of grief and tears

Are painful to her."

Ah! to wait for death!

To see one's idol with the signature

Of the Destroyer stamped upon her brow.

And know that she is doomed, beyond all hope;

To watch her while she fades; to see the form

That once was Beauty's own become a corpse

In all but breathing, and to meet her eyes

A hundred times a day—while the heart bleeds—

With smiles of smooth dissembling, and with words

Cheerful as morning, and to do all this

Through weeks and weary months, till one half longs

To see the spell dissolved, and feel the worst

That death can do: can there be misery

Sadder than this?

My time I passed alone,

And at the bedside of my dying wife.

She talked of death as children talk of sleep,

When—a forgetful blank—it lies between

Their glad impatience and a holiday.

The morrow—ah! the morrow! That was name

For hope all realized, for work all done,

For pain all passed, for life and strength renewed.

For fruitage of endeavor, for repose,

For heaven!

What would the morrow bring to me?

The morrow—ah! the morrow! It was blank—

Nay, blank and black with gloom of clouds and night

Never before had I so realized

My helplessness. I could not find relief

In love or labor. I could only sit,

And gaze against a wall, without the power

To pierce or climb. My pride of life was gone.

My spirit broken, and my strife with God

Was finished. If I could not look before,

I dare not look above; and so, whene'er

I could forget the present, I went back

Upon the past.

One soft June day, my thoughts,

Touched by some song of bird, or glimpse of green,

Returned to life's bright morning, and the Junes

That flooded with their wealth of life and song

The valley of my birth. Again I walked the meads,

Brilliant with beaded grass, and heard the shrill,

Sweet jargon of the meadow-birds. Again

I trod the forest paths, in shade of trees

With foliage so tender that the sun

Shot through the soft, thin leaves its virid sheen,

As through the emerald waters of the sea.

The scarlet tanager—a flake of fire,

Blown from the tropic heats upon the breath

That brought the summer—caught upon a twig,

Or quenched its glow in some remote recess.

The springing ferns unfolded at my feet

Their tan-brown scrolls, the tiny star-flower shone

Among its leaves; the insects filled the air

With a monotonous, reedy resonance

Of whir and hum, and I sat down again

Upon a bank, to gather violets.

From dreams of retrospective joy I woke

At last, to the quick tinkle of a bell.

My wife had touched it. She had been asleep,

And, waking, called me to her side. The note,

Familiar as the murmur of her voice,

For the first time was strange. Another bell,

With other music, ran adown the years

That lay between me and the golden day

When, up the mountain-path, I followed far

The lamb that bore it. All the scene came back

In a broad flash; and with it came the same

Strange apprehension of a mighty change—

A vague prevision of transition, born

Of what, I knew not; on what errand sent,

I could not guess.

I rose upon my feet,

Responsive to the summons, when I heard,

Repeated in the ear of memory,

The words my mother spoke to me that day:

"My Paul has climbed the noblest mountain-height

In all his little world, and gazed on scenes

As beautiful as rest beneath the sun.

I trust he will remember all his life

That, to his best achievement, and the spot

Closest to heaven his youthful feet have trod,

He has been guided by a guileless lamb.

It is an omen which his mother's heart

Will treasure with her jewels."

Had her tongue

Been moved to prophecy? Omen of what?—

Of a new height of life to be achieved

By my lamb's leading? Ay, it seemed like this!

An answer to a thousand prayers, up-breathed

By her whom I had lost, repeated long

By her whom I was losing? Was it this?

Thus charged with premonition, when I stepped

Into the shaded room, my cheeks were pale,

And every nerve was quivering with the stress

Of uncontrolled emotion. Ah! my lamb!

How white! How innocent! My lamb, my lamb!

Even the scarlet ribbon which adorned

The lambkin of my chase was at her throat,

Repeated in a bright geranium-flower!

"Loop up the curtains, love! Let in the light!"

The words came strong and sweet, as if the life

From which they breathed were at its tidal flood.

"Oh! blessed light!" she added, as the sun

Flamed on the velvet roses of the floor,

And touched to life the pictures on the wall,

And smote the dusk with bars of amber.

"Paul!"

I turned to answer, and beheld a face

That glowed with a celestial fire like his

Who talked with God in Sinai.

"Paul," she said.

"I have been almost home. I may not tell,

For language cannot paint, what I have seen.

The veil was very thin, and I so near,

I caught the sheen of multitudes, and heard

Voices that called and answered from afar

Through spaces inconceivable, and songs

Whose harmonies responsive surged and sank

On the attenuate air, till all my soul

Was thrilled and filled with music, and I prayed

To be let loose, that I might cast myself

Upon the mighty tides, and give my life

To the supernal raptures. Ay, I prayed

That death might come, and give me my release

From this poor clay, and that I might be born

By its last travail into life."

"Dear wife," I said,

"You have been wildly dreaming, and your brain,

Quickened to strange vagaries by disease,

Has cheated you. You must not talk like this:

'Twill harm you. I will hold your hand awhile,

And you shall have repose.

She smiled and said,

While her eyes shone with an unearthly light:

"You are not wise, my dear, in things like these.

The vision was as real as yourself;

And it will not be long before I go

To mingle in the life that I have seen.

I know it, dearest, for she told me this."

"She told you this?" I said,—"Who told you this?

Did you hold converse with the multitude?"

"Not with the multitude," she answered me;

"But while I gazed upon the throng, and prayed

That death might loose me, there appeared a group

Of radiant ones behind the filmy veil

That hung between us, looking helplessly

Upon my struggle, but with eyes that beamed

With love ineffable. I knew them too—

Knew all of them but one—and she the first

And sweetest of them all. Pure as the light

And beautiful as morning, she advanced;

And, at her touch, the veil was parted wide,

While she passed through, and stood beside my bed.

She took my hand, she kissed my burning cheek,

And then, in words that calmed my spirit, said:

"'Your prayer will soon be answered; but one prayer,

Breathed many years by you, and many years

By one you know not, must be answered first.

You must go back, though for a little time,

And reap the harvest of a life. To him

Whom you and I have loved, say all your heart

Shall move your lips to speak, and he will hear.

The strength, the boldness, the persuasive power

Which you may need for this, shall all be yours;

For you shall have the ministry of those

Whom you have seen. Speak as a dying wife

Has liberty to speak to him she leaves;

And tell him this—that he may know the voice

That gives you your commission—tell him this:

The lamb has slipped the leash by which his hand

Held her in thrall, and seeks the mountain-height;

And he, if he reclaim her to his grasp,

Must follow where she leads, and kneel at last

Upon the summit by her side. And more:

Give him my promise that if he do this,

He shall receive from that fair altitude

Such vision of the realm that lies around,

Cleft by the river of immortal life,

As shall so lift him from his selfishness,

And so enlarge his soul, that he shall stand

Redeemed from all unworthiness, and saved

To happiness and heaven.'"

Her words flowed forth

With the strong utterance, in truth, of one

Inspired from other worlds; while pale and faint,

I drank her revelations. Unbelief

Had given the lie to her abounding faith,

And held her vision figment of disease,

Until the message of my mother fell

Upon my ears. Then overcome, I wept

With deep convulsions, rose and walked the room,

Wrung my clasped hands, and cried with choking voice,

"My mother! O! my mother!"

"Gently, love!

For she is with you," said my dying wife.

"Nay, all of them are with us. This small room

Is now the gate of heaven; and you must do

That which befits the presence and the place.

Come! sit beside me; for my time is short,

And I have much to say. What will you do

When I am gone? Will the old life of art

Content you? Will you fill your waiting time

With the old dreams of fame and excellence?"

"Alas!" I answered, "I am done with life:

My life is dead; and though my hand has won

All it has striven to win, and all my heart

In its weak pride has prompted it to seek

Of love and honor; though success is mine

In all my eager enterprise, I know

My life has been a failure. I am left

Or shall be left, when you, my love, are gone,

Without resource—a hopeless, worthless man,

Longing to hide his shame and his despair

Within the grave."

"I thank thee, Lord!" she said:

"So many prayers are answered! ... You knew not

That I had asked for this. You did not know

When you were striving with your feeble might

For the great prizes that beguiled your pride,

That at the hand of God I begged success.

Ay, Paul, I prayed that you might gather all

The good that you have won, and that, at last,

You might be brought to know the worthlessncss

Of every selfish meed, and feel how weak—

How worse than helpless—is the highest man

Who lives within, and labors to, himself.

Not one of all the prizes you have gained

Contains the good that lies in your despair."

"Teach me," I said, "for I am ignorant;

Lead me, for I am blind. Explain the past,

With all its errors. Why am I so low,

And you so high?"

She pressed my hand, and said

"You have been hungry all your life for God,

And known it not. You lavished first on me

Your heart's best love. You poured its treasured wealth

At an unworthy shrine. You made a God

Of poor mortality; and when you learned

Your love was greater than the one you loved—

The one you worshipped—you invoked the aid

Of your imagination, to enrich

Your pampered idol, till at last you bowed

Before a creature of your thought. You stole

From excellence divine the grace and good

That made me worshipful; and even these

Palled on your heart at last, and ceased to yield

The inspiration that you craved. You pined,

You starved for something infinitely sweet;

And still you sought it blindly, wilfully

In your poor wife,—sought it, and found it not,

Through wasted years of life.

"And then you craved

An infinite return. You asked for more

Than I could give, although I gave you all

That woman can bestow on man. You knew

You held my constant love, unlimited

Save by the bounds of mortal tenderness;

And still you longed for more. Then sprang your scheme

For finding in the love of multitudes,

And in their praise, that which had failed in me.

You wrote for love and fame, and won them both

By manly striving—won and wore them long.

All good there is in love and praise of men,

You garnered in your life. On this reward

You lived, till you were sated, or until

You learned it bore no satisfying meed—

Learned that the love of many was not more

Than love of one. With all my love your own,

With love and praise of men, your famished soul

Craved infinite approval—craved a love

Beyond the love of woman and of man.

"Then with new hope, you apotheosized

Your cherished art, and sought for excellence

And for your own approval; with what end,

Your helplessness informs me. You essayed

The revelation of the mighty forms

That dwell in the unrealized. You sought

To shape your best ideals, and to find

In the grand scheme your motive and reward.

All this blind reaching after excellence,

Was but the reaching of your soul for God.

Imagination could not touch the height;

And you were baffled. So, you failed to find

The God your spirit yearned for in your art,

And failed of self-approval.

"You have now

But one resource,—you are shut up to this:

You must bow down and worship God; and give

Your heart to him, accept his love for you,

And feast your soul on excellence in him.

So, a new life shall open to your feet,

Strown richly with rewards; and when your steps

Shall reach the river, I will wait for you

Upon the other shore, and we shall be

One in the life immortal as in this.

O! Paul! your time is now. I cannot die

And leave you comfortless. I cannot die

And enter on the pleasures that I know

Await me yonder, with the consciousness

That you are still unhappy."

All my life

Thus lay revealed in light which she had poured

Upon its track. I learned where she had found

Her peaceful joy, her satisfying good,

And where, in my rebellious pride of heart,

Mine had been lost. She, by an instinct sure,

Or by the grace of Heaven, had in her youth,

Though sorely chastened, given herself to God

And through a life of saintly purity—

A life of love to me and love to all—

Had feasted at the fountain of all love.

Had worshipped at the Excellence Divine,

And only waited for my last adieu

To take her crown.

I sat like one struck dumb.

I knew not how to speak, or what to do.

She looked at me expectant; while a thrill

Of terror shot through all my frame.

"Alas!"

She said, "I thought you would be ready now."

At this, the door was opened silently,

And our dear daughter stood within the room.

Alarmed at vision of the sudden change

That death had wrought upon her mother's face,

She hastened to her side, and kneeling there,

Bowed on her breast with tears and choking sobs,

Her heart too full for speech.

"Be silent, dear!"

The dying mother said, resting her hand

Upon her daughter's head. "Be silent, dear!

Your father kneels to pray. Make room for him,

That he may kneel beside you."

At her words,

I was endowed with apprehensions new;

And somewhere in my quickened consciousness,

I felt the presence of her heavenly friends,

And knew that there were spirits in the room.

I did not doubt, nor have I doubted since,

That there were loving witnesses of all

The scenes enacted round that hallowed bed.

Ay, and they spoke. Deep in the innermost

I heard the tender words, "O! kneel my son!—"

A sweet monition from my mother's lips.

"Kneel! kneel!" It was the echo of a throng.

"Kneel! kneel!" The gentle mandate reached my heart

From depths of lofty space. It was the voice

Of the Good Father.

From the curtain folds,

That rustled at the window, in the airs

That moved with conscious pulse to passing wings,

Came the same burden "Kneel!"

"Kneel! kneel! O! kneel!"

In tones of earnest pleading, came from lips

Already pinched by death.

A hundred worlds.

Imposed upon my shoulders, had not bowed

And crushed me to my knees with surer power.

The hand that lay upon my daughter's head

Then passed to mine; but still my lips were dumb.

"Pray!" said the spirit of my mother.

"Pray!"

The word repeated, came from many lips.

"Pray!" said the voice of God within my soul;

While every whisper of the living air

Echoed the low command.

"Pray! pray! O! pray!"

My dying wife entreated, while swift tears

Slid to her pillow.

Then the impulse came,

And I poured out like water all my heart.

"O! God!" I said, "be merciful to me

A reprobate! I have blasphemed thy name.

Abused thy patient love, and held from thee

My heart and life; and now, in my extreme

Of need and of despair, I come to thee.

O! cast me not away, for here, at last,

After a life of selfishness and sin,

I yield my will to thine, and pledge my soul—

All that I am, all I can ever be—

Supremely to thy service. I renounce

All worldly aims, all selfish enterprise.

And dedicate the remnant of my power

To thee and those thou lovest. Comfort me!

O! come and comfort me, for I despair!

Give me thy peace, for I am rent and tossed!

Feed me with love, else I shall die of want!

Behold! I empty out my worthlessncss,

And beg thee to come in, and fill my soul

With thy rich presence. I adore thy love;

I seek for thy approval; I bow down,

And worship thee, the Excellence Supreme.

I've tasted of the sweetest that the world

Can give to me; and human love and praise.

And all of excellence within the scope

Of my conception, and my power to reach

And realize in highest forms of art,

Have left me hungry, thirsty lor thyself.

O! feed and fire me! Fill and furnish me!

And if thou hast for me some humble task—

Some service for thyself, or for thy own—

Reveal it to thy sad, repentant child,

Or use him as thy willing instrument.

I ask it for the sake of Jesus Christ,

Henceforth my Master!"

Multitudes, it seemed,

Responded with "Amen!" as if the word

Were caught from mortal lips by swooping choirs

Of spirits ministrant, and borne away

In sweet reverberations into space.

I raised my head at last, and met the eyes

Bright with the light of death, and with the dawn

Of opening heaven. The smile that overspread

The fading features was the peaceful smile

Of an immortal,—full of faith and love—

A satisfied, triumphant, shining smile,

Lit by the heavenly glory.

"Paul," she said,

"My work is done; but you will live and work

These many years. Your life is just begun,

Too late, but well begun; and you are mine,

Now and forevermore.... Dear Lord! my thanks

For this thy crowning blessing!"

Then she paused,

And raised her eyes in a seraphic trance,

And lifted her thin fingers, that were thrilled

With tremulous motion, like the slender spray

On which a throbbing song-bird clings, and pours

His sweet incontinence of ecstasy,

And then in broken whispers said to me:

"Do you not hear them? They have caught the news,

And all the sky is ringing with their song

Of gladness and of welcome. 'Paul is saved!

Paul is redeemed and saved!' I hear them cry;

And myriad voices catch the new delight,

And carry the acclaim, till heaven itself

Sends back the happy echo: 'Paul is saved.'"

She stretched her hands, and took me to her breast.

I kissed her, blessed her, spoke my last adieu,

And yielded place to her whom God had given

To be our child. After a long embrace.

She whispered: "I am weary; let me sleep!"

She passed to peaceful slumber like a child,

The while attendant angels built the dream

On which she rode to heaven. Not once again

She spoke to mortal ears, but slept and smiled,

And slept and smiled again, till daylight passed.

The night came down; the long hours lapsed away;

The city sounds grew fainter, till at last

We sat alone with silence and with death.

At the first blush of morning she looked up,

And spoke, but not to us: "I'm coming now!"

I sought the window, to relieve the pain

Of long suppressed emotion. In the East,

Tinged with the golden dawn, the morning star

Was blazing in its glory, while beneath,

The slender moon, at its last rising, hung,

Paling and dying in the growing light,

And passing with that leading up to heaven.

My daughter stood beside her mother's bed,

But I had better vision of the scene

In the sweet symbol God had hung for me

Upon the sky.

Swiftly the dawn advanced,

And higher rose, and still more faintly shone,

The star-led moon. Then, as it faded out,

Quenched by prevailing day, I heard one sigh

A sigh so charged with pathos of deep joy,

And peace ineffable, that memory

Can never lose the sound; and all was past!

The peaceful summer-day that rose upon

This night of trial and this morn of grief,

Rose not with calmer light than that which dawned

Upon my spirit. Chastened, bowed, subdued,

I kissed the rod that smote me, and exclaimed:

"The Lord hath given; the Lord hath taken away

And blessed be his name!"

Rebellion slept.

I grieved, and still I grieve; but with a heart

At peace with God, and soft with sympathy

Toward all my sorrowing, struggling, sinful race.

My hope, that clung so fondly to the world

And the rewards of time, an anchor sure

Now grasps the Eternal Rock within the veil

Of troubled waters. Storms may wrench and toss,

And tides may swing me, in their ebb and flow,

But I shall not be moved.

Once more! once more

I shall behold her face, and clasp her hand!

Once more—forevermore!

So here I give

The gospel of her precious, Christian life.

I owe it to herself, and to the world.

Grateful for all her tender ministry

In life and death, I bring these leaves, entwined

With her own roses, dewy with my tears,

And lay them as the tribute of my love

Upon the grave that holds her sacred dust.

END.

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Table of Contents

KATHRINA

A TRIBUTE.

PART I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

COMPLAINT.

PART II.

LOVE.

A REFLECTION.

PART III.

LABOR.

DESPAIR.

PART IV.

CONSUMMATION.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE