Personal Poems II, vol 4, part 2 | Page 4

poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours?Grew brighter for that singing,?From brook and bird and meadow flowers?A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,?New glory over Woman;?And daily life and duty seemed?No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth?Of fact and feeling better?Than all the dreams that held my youth?A still repining debtor,
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,?The themes of sweet discoursing;?The tender idyls of the heart?In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,?Of loving knight and lady,?When farmer boy and barefoot girl?Were wandering there already?
I saw through all familiar things?The romance underlying;?The joys and griefs that plume the wings?Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,?The same sweet fall of even,?That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,?And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills?The sweetbrier and the clover;?With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,?Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,?I saw the Man uprising;?No longer common or unclean,?The child of God's baptizing!
With clearer eyes I saw the worth?Of life among the lowly;?The Bible at his Cotter's hearth?Had made my own more holy.
And if at times an evil strain,?To lawless love appealing,?Broke in upon the sweet refrain?Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,?No inward answer gaining;?No heart had I to see or hear?The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget?His worth, in vain bewailings;?Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt?Uncancelled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line?Which tells his lapse from duty,?How kissed the maddening lips of wine?Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between?The erring one and Heaven,?That he who loved like Magdalen,?Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous chime?Eternal echoes render;?The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,?And Milton's starry splendor!
But who his human heart has laid?To Nature's bosom nearer??Who sweetened toil like him, or paid?To love a tribute dearer?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong?The human feeling gushes?The very moonlight of his song?Is warm with smiles and blushes!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,?So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;?Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,?But spare his Highland Mary!?1854.
TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
So spake Esaias: so, in words of flame,?Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame?The traffickers in men, and put to shame,?All earth and heaven before,?The sacerdotal robbers of the poor.
All the dread Scripture lives for thee again,?To smite like lightning on the hands profane?Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain.?Once more the old Hebrew tongue?Bends with the shafts of God a bow new-strung!
Take up the mantle which the prophets wore;?Warn with their warnings, show the Christ once more?Bound, scourged, and crucified in His blameless poor;?And shake above our land?The unquenched bolts that blazed in Hosea's hand!
Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years?The solemn burdens of the Orient seers,?And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears.?Mightier was Luther's word?Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword!?1858.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS
ON A BLANK LEAF OF "POEMS PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED."
Well thought! who would not rather hear?The songs to Love and Friendship sung?Than those which move the stranger's tongue,?And feed his unselected ear?
Our social joys are more than fame;?Life withers in the public look.?Why mount the pillory of a book,?Or barter comfort for a name?
Who in a house of glass would dwell,?With curious eyes at every pane??To ring him in and out again,?Who wants the public crier's bell?
To see the angel in one's way,?Who wants to play the ass's part,--?Bear on his back the wizard Art,?And in his service speak or bray?
And who his manly locks would shave,?And quench the eyes of common sense,?To share the noisy recompense?That mocked the shorn and blinded slave?
The heart has needs beyond the head,?And, starving in the plenitude?Of strange gifts, craves its common food,--?Our human nature's daily bread.
We are but men: no gods are we,?To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak,?Each separate, on his painful peak,?Thin-cloaked in self-complacency.
Better his lot whose axe is swung?In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's?Who by the him her spindle whirls?And sings the songs that Luther sung,
Than his who, old, and cold, and vain,?At Weimar sat, a demigod,?And bowed with Jove's imperial nod?His votaries in and out again!
Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet!?Ambition, hew thy rocky stair!?Who envies him who feeds on air?The icy splendor of his seat?
I see your Alps, above me, cut?The dark, cold sky; and dim and lone?I see ye sitting,--stone on stone,--?With human senses dulled and shut.
I could not reach you, if I would,?Nor sit among your cloudy shapes;?And (spare the fable of the grapes?And fox) I would not if I could.
Keep to your lofty pedestals!?The safer plain below I choose?Who never wins can rarely lose,?Who never climbs as rarely falls.
Let such as love the eagle's scream?Divide with him his home of ice?For me shall gentler notes suffice,--?The valley-song of bird and stream;
The pastoral bleat,