East and West | Page 6

friend's--the poet's--table:?The latest spawn the press hath cast,--?The "modern Pope's," "the later Byron's,"--?Why e'en the best may not outlast?Thy poor relation,--Sempervirens.
Thy sire saw the light that shone?On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,?On many a royal gilded throne?And deed forgotten in the present;?He saw the age of sacred trees?And Druid groves and mystic larches;?And saw from forest domes like these?The builder bring his Gothic arches.
And must thou, foundling, still forego?Thy heritage and high ambition,?To lie full lowly and full low,?Adjusted to thy new condition??Not hidden in the drifted snows,?But under ink-drops idly spattered,?And leaves ephemeral as those?That on thy woodland tomb were scattered.
Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak?The moral of thy simple story:?Though life is all that thou dost seek,?And age alone thy crown of glory,--?Not thine the only germs that fail?The purpose of their high creation,?If their poor tenements avail?For worldly show and ostentation.
A Sanitary Message.
Last night, above the whistling wind,?I heard the welcome rain,--?A fusillade upon the roof,?A tattoo on the pane:?The key-hole piped; the chimney-top?A warlike trumpet blew;?Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife,?A softer voice stole through.
"Give thanks, O brothers!" said the voice,?"That He who sent the rains?Hath spared your fields the scarlet dew?That drips from patriot veins:?I've seen the grass on Eastern graves?In brighter verdure rise;?But, oh! the rain that gave it life?Sprang first from human eyes.
"I come to wash away no stain?Upon your wasted lea;?I raise no banners, save the ones?The forest wave to me:?Upon the mountain side, where Spring?Her farthest picket sets,?My reveille awakes a host?Of grassy bayonets.
"I visit every humble roof;?I mingle with the low:?Only upon the highest peaks?My blessings fall in snow;?Until, in tricklings of the stream?And drainings of the lea,?My unspent bounty comes at last?To mingle with the sea."
And thus all night, above the wind,?I heard the welcome rain,--?A fusillade upon the roof,?A tattoo on the pane:?The key-hole piped; the chimney-top?A warlike trumpet blew;?But, mingling with these sounds of strife,?This hymn of peace stole through.
The Copperhead.
(1864.)
There is peace in the swamp where the Copper head sleeps,?Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps,?Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air,?And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer;?There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death,?Though the mist is miasm, the Upas tree's breath,?Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,--?There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves!
Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip?Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver's whip;?But beware the false footstep,--the stumble that brings?A deadlier lash than the overseer swings.?Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread,?As the straight steady stroke of that hammershaped head;?Whether slave, or proud planter, who braves that dull crest, Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead's rest!
Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men,?In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den??Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade?To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made;?Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away,?Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play;?And then to your heel can you righteously doom?The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom!
On a Pen of Thomas Starr King.
This is the reed the dead musician dropped,?With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden;?The prompt allegro of its music stopped,?Its melodies unbidden.
But who shall finish the unfinished strain,?Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder,?And bid the slender barrel breathe again,--?An organ-pipe of thunder?
His pen! what humbler memories cling about?Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces?Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out?In smiles and courtly phrases!
The truth, half jesting, half in earnest flung;?The word of cheer, with recognition in it;?The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung?The golden gift within it.
But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave:?No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision;?The incantation that its power gave?Sleeps with the dead magician.
Lone Mountain.
(Cemetery, San Francisco.)
This is that hill of awe?That Persian Sindbad saw,--?The mount magnetic;?And on its seaward face,?Scattered along its base,?The wrecks prophetic.
Here come the argosies?Blown by each idle breeze,?To and fro shifting;?Yet to the hill of Fate?All drawing, soon or late,--?Day by day drifting;--
Drifting forever here?Barks that for many a year?Braved wind and weather;?Shallops but yesterday?Launched on yon shining bay,--?Drawn all together.
This is the end of all:?Sun thyself by the wall,?O poorer Hindbad!?Envy not Sindbad's fame:?Here come alike the same,?Hindbad and Sindbad.
California's Greeting to Seward.
(1869.)
We know him well: no need of praise?Or bonfire from the windy hill?To light to softer paths and ways?The world-worn man we honor still;
No need to quote those truths he spoke?That burned through years of war and shame.?While History carves with surer stroke?Across our map his noon-day fame;
No need to bid him show the scars?Of blows dealt by the Scaean gate,?Who lived to pass its shattered bars,?And see the