Before the Curfew | Page 2

double row of chairs.
I was a full half hour before
the rest,
Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest.
So from the
table's side a chair I took,
And having neither company nor book
To
keep me waking, by degrees there crept
A torpor over me,--in short, I
slept.
Loosed from its chain, along the wreck-strown track
Of the dead
years my soul goes travelling back;
My ghosts take on their robes of
flesh; it seems
Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than dreams,
So
real are the shapes that meet my eyes.
They bring no sense of wonder,
no surprise,
No hint of other than an earth-born source;
All seems
plain daylight, everything of course.

How dim the colors are, how poor and faint
This palette of weak
words with which I paint!
Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so

As to my eyes they seem, my page would glow
Like a queen's
missal, warm as if the brush
Of Titian or Velasquez brought the flush

Of life into their features. Ay de mi!
If syllables were pigments,
you should see
Such breathing portraitures as never man
Found in
the Pitti or the Vatican.
Here sits our POET, Laureate, if you will.
Long has he worn the
wreath, and wears it still.
Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his bust

Looks down on marbles covering royal dust,
Kings by the Grace of
God, or Nature's grace;
Dead! No! Alive! I see him in his place,

Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven denies
Her children,
pinched by cold New England skies,
Too often, while the nursery's
happier few
Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue.
Kind,
soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines
The ray serene that filled
Evangeline's.
Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait
Amid the
noisy clamor of debate
The looked-for moment when a peaceful word

Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred.
In every
tone I mark his tender grace
And all his poems hinted in his face;

What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives!
How could. I think him
dead? He lives! He lives!
There, at the table's further end I see
In his old place our Poet's
vis-a-vis,
The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square,

In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair.
His social hour no leaden
care alloys,
His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,--
That
lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,--
What ear has heard it and remembers
not?
How often, halting at some wide crevasse
Amid the windings
of his Alpine pass,
High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer,

Listening the far-off avalanche to hear,
Silent, and leaning on his
steel-shod staff,
Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh,

From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls
Creep with the moving

glacier as it crawls
How does vast Nature lead her living train
In
ordered sequence through that spacious brain,
As in the primal hour
when Adam named
The new-born tribes that young creation
claimed!--
How will her realm be darkened, losing thee,
Her darling,
whom we call our AGASSIZ!
But who is he whose massive frame belies
The maiden shyness of his
downcast eyes?
Who broods in silence till, by questions pressed,

Some answer struggles from his laboring breast?
An artist Nature
meant to dwell apart,
Locked in his studio with a human heart,

Tracking its eaverned passions to their lair,
And all its throbbing
mysteries laying bare.
Count it no marvel that he broods alone
Over
the heart he studies,--'t is his own;
So in his page, whatever shape it
wear,
The Essex wizard's shadowed self is there,--
The great
ROMANCER, hid beneath his veil
Like the stern preacher of his
sombre tale;
Virile in strength, yet bashful as a girl,
Prouder than
Hester, sensitive as Pearl.
From his mild throng of worshippers released,
Our Concord Delphi
sends its chosen priest,
Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer,
By
every title always welcome here.
Why that ethereal spirit's frame
describe?
You know the race-marks of the Brahmin tribe,
The spare,
slight form, the sloping shoulders' droop,
The calm, scholastic mien,
the clerkly stoop,
The lines of thought the sharpened features wear,

Carved by the edge of keen New England air.
List! for he speaks! As
when a king would choose
The jewels for his bride, he might refuse

This diamond for its flaw,--find that less bright
Than those, its
fellows, and a pearl less white
Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at
last,
The fairest gems are chosen, and made fast
In golden fetters;
so, with light delays

He seeks the fittest word to fill his phrase;
Nor
vain nor idle his fastidious quest,
His chosen word is sure to prove
the best.
Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song,
Does he,
the Buddha of the West, belong?
He seems a winged Franklin,

sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies;
And which
the nobler calling,--if 't is fair
Terrestrial with celestial to compare,--

To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame,
Or walk the chambers
whence the lightning came,
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire,

And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre?
If lost at times in vague
aerial flights,
None treads with firmer footstep when he lights;
A
soaring nature, ballasted with sense,
Wisdom without her wrinkles or
pretence,
In every Bible he has faith to read,
And every altar helps
to shape his creed.
Ask you what name