May-Day | Page 7

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 of home;?Nay, letters found us in our paradise;?So in the gladness of the new event?We struck our camp, and left the happy hills.?The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;?The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,?The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,?And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,?Permitted on her infinite repose?Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,?As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.
OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.
BRAHMA.
If the red slayer think he slays,?Or if the slain think he is slain,?They know well the subtle ways?I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;?Shadow and sunlight