May-Day | Page 7

pure for a purer sky?
And presently the sky is changed; O world!
What pictures and what harmonies are
thine!
The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
So like the soul of me, what if't
were me?
A melancholy better than all mirth.
Comes the sweet sadness at the
retrospect,
Or at the foresight of obscurer years?
Like yon slow-sailing cloudy
promontory,
Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
Superior to all its gaudy skirts.

And, that no day of life may lack romance,
The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding
down
A private beam into each several heart.
Daily the bending skies solicit man,

The seasons chariot him from this exile,
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,

The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter
lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.
With a vermilion pencil mark the day
When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs

Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls
Of loud Bog River, suddenly
confront
Two of our mates returning with swift oars.
One held a printed journal
waving high
Caught from a late-arriving traveller,
Big with great news, and shouted
the report
For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
Of the wire-cable laid
beneath the sea,
And landed on our coast, and pulsating

With ductile fire. Loud,
exulting cries
From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,
Greet the glad miracle.
Thought's new-found path
Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,
Match
God's equator with a zone of art,
And lift man's public action to a height
Worthy the
enormous clouds of witnesses,
When linked hemispheres attest his deed.
We have
few moments in the longest life
Of such delight and wonder as there grew,--
Nor yet
unsuited to that solitude:
A burst of joy, as if we told the fact
To ears intelligent; as if
gray rock
And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know
This feat of wit, this
triumph of mankind;
As if we men were talking in a vein
Of sympathy so large, that
ours was theirs,
And a prime end of the most subtle element
Were fairly reached at
last. Wake, echoing caves!
Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,
Let them
hear well! 't is theirs as much as ours.
A spasm throbbing through the pedestals
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,

Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill
To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.
The
lightning has run masterless too long;
He must to school, and learn his verb and noun,

And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,
Spelling with guided tongue man's

messages
Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.
And yet I marked, even in the
manly joy
Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat,
(Perchance I erred,) a shade of
discontent;
Or was it for mankind a generous shame,
As of a luck not quite legitimate,

Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part?
Was it a college pique of town and
gown,
As one within whose memory it burned
That not academicians, but some lout,

Found ten years since the Californian gold?
And now, again, a hungry company
Of
traders, led by corporate sons of trade,
Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools

Of science, not from the philosophers,
Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
'Twas
always thus, and will be; hand and head
Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift,
The
other slow,--this the Prometheus,
And that the Jove,--yet, howsoever hid,
It was from
Jove the other stole his fire,
And, without Jove, the good had never been.
It is not
Iroquois or cannibals,
But ever the free race with front sublime,
And these instructed
by their wisest too,
Who do the feat, and lift humanity.
Let not him mourn who best
entitled was,
Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,
Yea, plant the tree that bears best
apples, plant,
And water it with wine, nor watch askance
Whether thy sons or
strangers eat the fruit:
Enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed.
We flee away from cities, but we bring
The best of cities with us, these learned
classifiers,
Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
We praise the guide,
we praise the forest life;
But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore
Of books and arts
and trained experiment,
Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?
O no, not we!
Witness the shout that shook
Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail

The joyful
traveller gives, when on the verge
Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears
From a
log-cabin stream Beethoven's notes
On the piano, played with master's hand.
'Well
done!' he cries; 'the bear is kept at bay,
The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;

All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,
This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,

This wild plantation will suffice to chase.
Now speed the gay celerities of art,
What in
the desert was impossible
Within four walls is possible again,--
Culture and libraries,
mysteries of skill,
Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife
Of keen competing youths,
joined or alone
To outdo each other, and extort applause.
Mind wakes a new-born
giant from her sleep.
Twirl the old wheels? Time takes fresh start again
On for a
thousand years of genius more.'
The holidays were fruitful, but must end;
One August evening had a cooler breath;

Into each mind intruding duties crept;
Under the cinders burned the fires