Bitter-Sweet

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bitter-Sweet, by J. G. Holland
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Title: Bitter-Sweet
Author: J. G. Holland
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6442]
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BITTER-SWEET ***
Produced by D. Garcia, Tom Allen, Charles Franks
and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
BITTER-SWEET
A Poem
By J. G. HOLLAND
CONTENTS.

PICTURE
PERSONS
PRELUDE
FIRST MOVEMENT--COLLOQUIAL.
The Question Stated and Argued
FIRST EPISODE.
The Question Illustrated by Nature
SECOND MOVEMENT--NARRATIVE.
The Question Illustrated by Experience
SECOND EPISODE.
The Question Illustrated by Story
THIRD MOVEMENT--DRAMATIC.
The Question Illustrated by the Denouement

L'ENVOY
PICTURE.
Winter's wild birthnight! In the fretful East
The uneasy wind moans
with its sense of cold,
And sends its sighs through gloomy mountain
gorge,
Along the valley, up the whitening hill,
To tease the sighing
spirits of the pines,
And waste in dismal woods their chilly life.
The
sky is dark, and on the huddled leaves--
The restless, rustling
leaves--sifts down its sleet,
Till the sharp crystals pin them to the
earth,
And they grow still beneath the rising storm.
The roofless
bullock hugs the sheltering stack,
With cringing head and closely
gathered feet,
And waits with dumb endurance for the morn.
Deep
in a gusty cavern of the barn
The witless calf stands blatant at his
chain;
While the brute mother, pent within her stall,
With the wild
stress of instinct goes distraught,
And frets her horns, and bellows
through the night.
The stream runs black; and the far waterfall
That
sang so sweetly through the summer eyes,
And swelled and swayed
to Zephyr's softest breath,
Leaps with a sullen roar the dark abyss,

And howls its hoarse responses to the wind.
The mill is still. The
distant factory,
That swarmed yestreen with many-fingered life,

And bridged the river with a hundred bars
Of molten light, is dark,
and lifts its bulk,
With dim, uncertain angles, to the sky.

Yet lower bows the storm. The leafless trees
Lash their lithe limbs,
and, with majestic voice,
Call to each other through the deepening
gloom;
And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs
Shriek with
the sharp abrasion; and the oak,
Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered
frosts,
Yields to the shoulder of the Titan Blast,
Forsakes its poise,
and, with a booming crash,
Sweeps a fierce passage to the smothered
rocks,
And lies a shattered ruin.

Other scene:--
Across the swale, half up the pine-capped hill,

Stands the old farmhouse with its clump of barns--
The old red
farmhouse--dim and dun to-night,
Save where the ruddy firelights
from the hearth
Flap their bright wings against the window panes,--

A billowy swarm that beat their slender bars,
Or seek the night to
leave their track of flame
Upon the sleet, or sit, with shifting feet

And restless plumes, among the poplar boughs--
The spectral poplars,
standing at the gate.
And now a man, erect, and tall, and strong,
Whose thin white hair,
and cheeks of furrowed bronze,
And ancient dress, betray the
patriarch,
Stands at the window, listening to the storm;
And as the
fire leaps with a wilder flame--
Moved by the wind--it wraps and
glorifies
His stalwart frame, until it flares and glows
Like the old
prophets, in transfigured guise,
That shape the sunset for cathedral
aisles.
And now it passes, and a sweeter shape
Stands in its place. O
blest maternity!
Hushed on her bosom, in a light embrace,
Her baby
sleeps, wrapped in its long white robe;
And as the flame, with soft,
auroral sweeps,
Illuminates the pair, how like they seem,
O Virgin
Mother! to thyself and thine!
Now Samuel comes with curls of
burning gold
To hearken to the voice of God without:
"Speak,
mighty One! Thy little servant hears!"
And Miriam, maiden, from her
household cares
Comes to the window in her loosened robe,--

Comes with the blazing timbrels in her hand,--
And, as the noise of
winds and waters swells,
It shapes the song of triumph to her lips:

"The horse and he who rode are overthrown!"
And now a man of
noble port and brow,
And aspect of benignant majesty,
Assumes the
vacant niche, while either side
Press the fair forms of children, and I
hear:
"Suffer the little ones to come to me!"
PERSONS.
Here dwells the