Songs In Many Keys | Page 7

grave Head and Killingworth's divine!?In those square sheets the songs of Maro fill?The silvery types of smooth-leaved Baskerville;?High over all, in close, compact array,?Their classic wealth the Elzevirs display.?In lower regions of the sacred space?Range the dense volumes of a humbler race;?There grim chirurgeons all their mysteries teach,?In spectral pictures, or in crabbed speech;?Harvey and Haller, fresh from Nature's page,?Shoulder the dreamers of an earlier age,?Lully and Geber, and the learned crew?That loved to talk of all they could not do.
Why count the rest,--those names of later days?That many love, and all agree to praise,--?Or point the titles, where a glance may read?The dangerous lines of party or of creed??Too well, perchance, the chosen list would show?What few may care and none can claim to know.?Each has his features, whose exterior seal?A brush may copy, or a sunbeam steal;?Go to his study,--on the nearest shelf?Stands the mosaic portrait of himself.
What though for months the tranquil dust descends,?Whitening the heads of these mine ancient friends,?While the damp offspring of the modern press?Flaunts on my table with its pictured dress;?Not less I love each dull familiar face,?Nor less should miss it from the appointed place;?I snatch the book, along whose burning leaves?His scarlet web our wild romancer weaves,?Yet, while proud Hester's fiery pangs I share,?My old MAGNALIA must be standing there!
THE BELLS
WHEN o'er the street the morning peal is flung?From yon tall belfry with the brazen tongue,?Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale,?To each far listener tell a different tale.?The sexton, stooping to the quivering floor?Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar,?Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one,?Each dull concussion, till his task is done.?Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome note?Clangs through the silence from the steeple's throat,?Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street,?Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall meet;?The bell, responsive to her secret flame,?With every note repeats her lover's name.?The lover, tenant of the neighboring lane,?Sighing, and fearing lest he sigh in vain,?Hears the stern accents, as they come and go,?Their only burden one despairing No!?Ocean's rough child, whom many a shore has known?Ere homeward breezes swept him to his own,?Starts at the echo as it circles round,?A thousand memories kindling with the sound;?The early favorite's unforgotten charms,?Whose blue initials stain his tawny arms;?His first farewell, the flapping canvas spread,?The seaward streamers crackling overhead,?His kind, pale mother, not ashamed to weep?Her first-born's bridal with the haggard deep,?While the brave father stood with tearless eye,?Smiling and choking with his last good-by.
'T is but a wave, whose spreading circle beats,?With the same impulse, every nerve it meets,?Yet who shall count the varied shapes that ride?On the round surge of that aerial tide!
O child of earth! If floating sounds like these?Steal from thyself their power to wound or please,?If here or there thy changing will inclines,?As the bright zodiac shifts its rolling signs,?Look at thy heart, and when its depths are known,?Then try thy brother's, judging by thine own,?But keep thy wisdom to the narrower range,?While its own standards are the sport of change,?Nor count us rebels when we disobey?The passing breath that holds thy passion's sway.
NON-RESISTANCE
PERHAPS too far in these considerate days?Has patience carried her submissive ways;?Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,?To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;?It is not written what a man shall do,?If the rude caitiff smite the other too!
Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need?God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!?As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,?When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;?As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow?When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;?As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,?Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,?When the dark plumage with the crimson beak?Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,--?So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm?The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,?Thy torches ready for the answering peal?From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel!
THE MORAL BULLY
YON whey-faced brother, who delights to wear?A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair,?Seems of the sort that in a crowded place?One elbows freely into smallest space;?A timid creature, lax of knee and hip,?Whom small disturbance whitens round the lip;?One of those harmless spectacled machines,?The Holy-Week of Protestants convenes;?Whom school-boys question if their walk transcends?The last advices of maternal friends;?Whom John, obedient to his master's sign,?Conducts, laborious, up to ninety-nine,?While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn,?Husks his white ivories like an ear of corn;?Dark in the brow and bilious in the cheek,?Whose yellowish linen flowers but once a week,?Conspicuous, annual, in their threadbare suits,?And the laced high-lows which they call their boots,?Well mayst thou shun that dingy front severe,?But him, O stranger, him thou canst not fear.
Be slow to judge, and slower to despise,?Man of broad shoulders and heroic size?The tiger, writhing from the boa's rings,?Drops at