Poems of Nature, part 3, Reminiscent Poems | Page 5

For a waking dream made good,
For an ideal understood,
For thy
Christian womanhood;
For thy marvellous gift to cull
From our common life and dull

Whatsoe'er is beautiful;
Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees
Dropping sweetness; true
heart's-ease
Of congenial sympathies;--
Still for these I own my debt;
Memory, with her eyelids wet,
Fain
would thank thee even yet!
And as one who scatters flowers
Where the Queen of May's sweet
hours
Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers,
In superfluous zeal bestowing
Gifts where gifts are overflowing,
So
I pay the debt I'm owing.
To thy full thoughts, gay or sad,
Sunny-hued or sober clad,

Something of my own I add;
Well assured that thou wilt take
Even the offering which I make


Kindly for the giver's sake.
1851.
MY NAMESAKE.
Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.
You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and
tend--
A green leaf on your own Green Banks--
The memory of
your friend.
For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides
The sobered brow and
lessening hair
For aught I know, the myrtled sides
Of Helicon are
bare.
Their scallop-shells so many bring
The fabled founts of song to try,

They've drained, for aught I know, the spring
Of Aganippe dry.
Ah well!--The wreath the Muses braid
Proves often Folly's cap and
bell;
Methinks, my ample beaver's shade
May serve my turn as
well.
Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt
Be paid by those I love in life.

Why should the unborn critic whet
For me his scalping-knife?
Why should the stranger peer and pry
One's vacant house of life
about,
And drag for curious ear and eye
His faults and follies out?--
Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon,
With chaff of words, the garb he
wore,
As corn-husks when the ear is gone
Are rustled all the more?
Let kindly Silence close again,
The picture vanish from the eye,

And on the dim and misty main
Let the small ripple die.
Yet not the less I own your claim
To grateful thanks, dear friends of
mine.
Hang, if it please you so, my name
Upon your household
line.

Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide
Her chosen names, I envy none

A mother's love, a father's pride,
Shall keep alive my own!
Still shall that name as now recall
The young leaf wet with morning
dew,
The glory where the sunbeams fall
The breezy woodlands
through.
That name shall be a household word,
A spell to waken smile or sigh;

In many an evening prayer be heard
And cradle lullaby.
And thou, dear child, in riper days
When asked the reason of thy
name,
Shalt answer: One 't were vain to praise
Or censure bore the
same.
"Some blamed him, some believed him good,
The truth lay doubtless
'twixt the two;
He reconciled as best he could
Old faith and fancies
new.
"In him the grave and playful mixed,
And wisdom held with folly
truce,
And Nature compromised betwixt
Good fellow and recluse.
"He loved his friends, forgave his foes;
And, if his words were harsh
at times,
He spared his fellow-men,--his blows
Fell only on their
crimes.
"He loved the good and wise, but found
His human heart to all akin

Who met him on the common ground
Of suffering and of sin.
"Whate'er his neighbors might endure
Of pain or grief his own
became;
For all the ills he could not cure
He held himself to blame.
"His good was mainly an intent,
His evil not of forethought done;

The work he wrought was rarely meant
Or finished as begun.
"Ill served his tides of feeling strong
To turn the common mills of use;

And, over restless wings of song,
His birthright garb hung loose!

"His eye was beauty's powerless slave,
And his the ear which discord
pains;
Few guessed beneath his aspect grave
What passions strove
in chains.
"He had his share of care and pain,
No holiday was life to him;
Still
in the heirloom cup we drain
The bitter drop will swim.
"Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird
And there a flower beguiled
his way;
And, cool, in summer noons, he heard
The fountains plash
and play.
"On all his sad or restless moods
The patient peace of Nature stole;

The quiet of the fields and woods
Sank deep into his soul.
"He worshipped as his fathers did,
And kept the faith of childish days,

And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
He loved the good old ways.
"The simple tastes, the kindly traits,
The tranquil air, and gentle
speech,
The silence of the soul that waits
For more than man to
teach.
"The cant of party, school, and sect,
Provoked at times his honest
scorn,
And Folly, in its gray respect,
He tossed on satire's horn.
"But still his heart was full of awe
And reverence for all sacred things;

And, brooding over form and law,'
He saw the Spirit's wings!
"Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud;
He heard far voices mock his
own,
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
Long roll of waves
unknown.
"The arrows of his straining sight
Fell quenched in darkness; priest
and sage,
Like lost guides calling left and right,
Perplexed his
doubtful age.
"Like childhood, listening for the sound
Of its dropped pebbles in the

well,
All vainly down the dark profound
His brief-lined plummet
fell.
"So, scattering flowers with pious pains
On old beliefs, of later creeds,

Which claimed