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

toil
With golden
threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky

with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And, like
the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,

And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow.
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the squirrels leaping,

The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in
keeping.
I watched him while in sportive mood
I read "The Twa Dogs" story,

And half believed he understood
The 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