Songs of Many Seasons (1862-74) | Page 3

wreath they won,
The
youthful sire and the gray-haired son.
O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;

Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring,--

All my tenure of heart and hand,
All my title to house and land;

Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death
and life!
What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered No,

When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her
Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice
swelled with the bosom's thrill?
Should I be I, or would it be
One
tenth another, to nine tenths me?
Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES
Not the light gossamer stirs with
less;

But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of

wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in
the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whispered
then
You may hear to-day in a hundred men.
O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover,-- and here we
are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,--
Edward's and
Dorothy's--all their own,--
A goodly record for Time to show
Of a
syllable spoken so long ago!--
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive

For the tender whisper that bade me live?
It shall be a blessing, my little maid!
I will heal the stab of the
Red-Coat's blade,
And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
And
gild with a rhyme your household name;
So you shall smile on us
brave and bright
As first you greeted the morning's light,
And live
untroubled by woes and fears
Through a second youth of a hundred
years.
1871.
THE ORGAN-BLOWER
DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower
bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my
wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above
the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through
quavering hymns and panting psalms.
No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged
soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly
bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting
dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace
devotion lends.
O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of
thine
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on

the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's skill,
Those thousand
throats were dumb and still:
Another's art may shape the tone,
The
breath that fills it is thine own.
Six days the silent Memnon waits
Behind his temple's folded gates;

But when the seventh day's sunshine falls
Through rainbowed
windows on the walls,
He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills
The
quivering air with rapturous thrills;
The roof resounds, the pillars
shake,
And all the slumbering echoes wake!
The Preacher from the Bible-text
With weary words my soul has
vexed
(Some stranger, fumbling far astray
To find the lesson for the
day);
He tells us truths too plainly true,
And reads the service all
askew,--
Why, why the--mischief--can't he look
Beforehand in the
service-book?
But thou, with decent mien and face,
Art always ready in thy place;

Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong
monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra
squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled
smiles.
Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit
end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true
as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but
all thy might,
Where honest labor does its best,
And leaves the
player all the rest.
This many-diapasoned maze,
Through which the breath of being
strays,
Whose music makes our earth divine,
Has work for mortal
hands like mine.
My duty lies before me. Lo,
The lever there! Take
hold and blow
And He whose hand is on the keys

Will play the tune
as He shall please.
1812.

AT THE PANTOMIME
THE house was crammed from roof to floor,
Heads piled on heads at
every door;
Half dead with August's seething heat
I crowded on and
found my seat,
My patience slightly out of joint,
My temper short
of boiling-point,
Not quite at Hate mankind as such,
Nor yet at
Love them overmuch.
Amidst the throng the pageant drew
Were gathered Hebrews not a
few,
Black-bearded, swarthy,--at their side
Dark, jewelled women,
orient-eyed:
If scarce a Christian hopes for grace
Who crowds one
in his narrow place,
What will the savage victim do
Whose ribs are
kneaded by a Jew?
Next on my left a breathing form
Wedged up against me, close and
warm;
The beak that crowned the bistred face
Betrayed the mould
of Abraham's race,--
That coal-black hair, that smoke-brown hue,--

Ah, cursed, unbelieving Jew
I started, shuddering, to the right,
And
squeezed--a second Israelite
Then woke the evil brood of rage
That slumber, tongueless, in their
cage;
I stabbed in turn with silent oaths
The hook-nosed kite of
carrion clothes,
The snaky usurer, him that crawls
And cheats
beneath the golden balls,
Moses and Levi, all the horde,
Spawn of
the race that slew its Lord.
Up came their murderous deeds of old,
The grisly story Chaucer told,

And many an ugly