Dreams and Days | Page 6

too cold
For frail hopes of summer's mold.
But if we, with spring-days mellow,
Wake to woeful wrecks of
change,
And the sparrow's ritornello
Scaling still its old sweet range;

Can we do a better thing
Than, with him, still build and sing?
Oh, my sparrow, thou dost breed
Thought in me beyond all telling;

Shootest through me sunlight, seed,
And fruitful blessing, with that
welling
Ripple of ecstatic rest
Gurgling ever from thy breast!
And thy breezy carol spurs
Vital motion in my blood,
Such as in the
sap-wood stirs,
Swells and shapes the pointed bud
Of the lilac; and
besets
The hollow thick with violets.
Yet I know not any charm
That can make the fleeting time
Of thy
sylvan, faint alarm
Suit itself to human rhyme:
And my yearning
rhythmic word
Does thee grievous wrong, blithe bird.

So, however thou hast wrought
This wild joy on heart and brain,
It
is better left untaught.
Take thou up the song again:
There is
nothing sad afloat
On the tide that swells thy throat!
I LOVED YOU, ONCE--
And did you think my heart
Could keep its love unchanging,
Fresh
as the buds that start
In spring, nor know estranging?
Listen! The
buds depart:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than ever.
'T is not the early love;
With day and night it alters,
And onward
still must move
Like earth, that never falters
For storm or star
above.
I loved you once; but now--
I love you more than ever.
With gifts in those glad days
How eagerly I sought you!
Youth,
shining hope, and praise:
These were the gifts I brought you.
In this
world little stays:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than
ever.
A child with glorious eyes
Here in our arms half sleeping--
So
passion wakeful lies;
Then grows to manhood, keeping
Its wistful,
young surprise:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than
ever.
When age's pinching air
Strips summer's rich possession,
And
leaves the branches bare,
My secret in confession
Still thus with
you I'll share:
I loved you once, but now--
I love you more than
ever.
II
THE BRIDE OF WAR
(ARNOLD'S MARCH TO CANADA, 1775)
I

The trumpet, with a giant sound,
Its harsh war-summons wildly sings;

And, bursting forth like mountain-springs,
Poured from the hillside
camping-ground,
Each swift battalion shouting flings
Its force in
line; where you may see
The men, broad-shouldered, heavily
Sway
to the swing of the march; their heads
Dark like the stones in
river-beds.
Lightly the autumn breezes
Play with the shining dust-cloud
Rising
to the sunset rays
From feet of the moving column.
Soft, as you
listen, comes
The echo of iterant drums,
Brought by the breezes
light
From the files that follow the road.
A moment their guns have
glowed
Sun-smitten: then out of sight
They suddenly sink,
Like
men who touch a new grave's brink!
II
So it was the march began,
The march of Morgan's riflemen,
Who
like iron held the van
In unhappy Arnold's plan
To win Wolfe's
daring fame again.
With them, by her husband's side,
Jemima
Warner, nobly free,
Moved more fair than when, a bride,
One year
since, she strove to hide
The blush it was a joy to see.
III
O distant, terrible forests of Maine,
With huge trees numberless as the
rain
That falls on your lonely lakes!
(It falls and sings through the
years, but wakes
No answering echo of joy or pain.)
Your tangled wilderness was tracked
With struggle and sorrow and
vengeful act
'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest.
Where wolf and
panther and serpent ceased,
Man added the horrors your dark maze
lacked.
The land was scarred with deeds not good,
Like the fretting of worms
on withered wood.
What if its venomous spell
Breathed into Arnold

a prompting of Hell,
With slow empoisoning force indued?
IV
As through that dreary realm he went,
Followed a shape of dark
portent:--
Pard-like, of furtive eye, with brain
To treason narrowing,
Aaron Burr,
Moved loyal-seeming in the train,
Led by the
arch-conspirator.
And craven Enos closed the rear,
Whose honor's
flame died out in fear.
Not sooner does the dry bough burn
And into
fruitless ashes turn,
Than he with whispered, false command
Drew
back the hundreds in his hand;
Fled like a shade; and all forsook.
Wherever Arnold bent his look,
Danger and doubt around him hung;

And pale Disaster, shrouded, flung
Black omens in his track, as
though
The fingers of a future woe
Already clutched his life, to
wring
Some expiation for the thing
That he was yet to do. A chill

Struck helpless many a steadfast will
Within the ranks; the very air

Rang with a thunder-toned despair:
The hills seemed wandering to
and fro,
Like lost guides blinded by the snow.
V
Yet faithful still 'mid woe and doubt
One woman's loyal heart--whose
pain
Filled it with pure celestial light--
Shone starry-constant like
the North,
Or that still radiance beaming forth
From sacred lights in
some lone fane.
But he whose ring Jemima wore,
By want and
weariness all unstrung,
Though strong and honest of heart and young,

Shrank at the blast that pierced so frore--
Like a huge, invisible
bird of prey
Furious launched from Labrador
And the granite cliffs
of Saguenay!
Along the bleak Dead River's banks
They forced amain their frozen
way;
But ever from the thinning ranks

Shapes of ice would reel and
fall,
Human shapes, whose dying prayer
Floated, a mute white mist,

in air;
The crowding snow their pall.
Spectre-like Famine drew near;
Her