The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell | Page 9

they seek.?Sing! there shall silence grow in earth and heaven,?A silence of deep awe and wondering; 110?For, listening gladly, bend the angels, even,?To hear a mortal like an angel sing.
III
Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking?For who shall bring the Maker's name to light,?To be the voice of that almighty speaking?Which every age demands to do it right.?Proprieties our silken bards environ;?He who would be the tongue of this wide land?Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron?And strike it with a toil-imbrownèd hand; 120?One who hath dwelt with Nature well attended,?Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic books,?Whose soul with all her countless lives hath blended,?So that all beauty awes us in his looks:?Who not with body's waste his soul hath pampered,?Who as the clear northwestern wind is free,?Who walks with Form's observances unhampered,?And follows the One Will obediently;?Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit,?Control a lovely prospect every way; 130?Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet,?And find a bottom still of worthless clay;?Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working,?Knowing that one sure wind blows on above,?And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking,?One God-built shrine of reverence and love;?Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches?Around the centre fixed of Destiny,?Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches?The moving globe of being like a sky; 140?Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer?Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,?Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer?Than that of all his brethren, low or high;?Who to the Right can feel himself the truer?For being gently patient with the wrong,?Who sees a brother in the evildoer,?And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song;--?This, this is he for whom the world is waiting?To sing the beatings of its mighty heart, 150?Too long hath it been patient with the grating?Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art.?To him the smiling soul of man shall listen,?Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,?And once again in every eye shall glisten?The glory of a nature satisfied.?His verse shall have a great commanding motion,?Heaving and swelling with a melody?Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean,?And all the pure, majestic things that be. 160?Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence?To make us feel the soul once more sublime,?We are of far too infinite an essence?To rest contented with the lies of Time.?Speak out! and lo! a hush of deepest wonder?Shall sink o'er all this many-voicèd scene,?As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder?Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.
THE FATHERLAND
Where is the true man's fatherland??Is it where he by chance is born??Doth not the yearning spirit scorn?In such scant borders to be spanned??Oh yes! his fatherland must be?As the blue heaven wide and free!
Is it alone where freedom is,?Where God is God and man is man??Doth he not claim a broader span?For the soul's love of home than this??Oh yes! his fatherland must be?As the blue heaven wide and free!
Where'er a human heart doth wear?Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves,?Where'er a human spirit strives?After a life more true and fair,?There is the true man's birthplace grand,?His is a world-wide fatherland!
Where'er a single slave doth pine,?Where'er one man may help another,--?Thank God for such a birthright, brother,--?That spot of earth is thine and mine!?There is the true man's birthplace grand,?His is a world-wide fatherland!
THE FORLORN
The night is dark, the stinging sleet,?Swept by the bitter gusts of air,?Drives whistling down the lonely street,?And glazes on the pavement bare.
The street-lamps flare and struggle dim?Through the gray sleet-clouds as they pass,?Or, governed by a boisterous whim,?Drop down and rustle on the glass.
One poor, heart-broken, outcast girl?Faces the east-wind's searching flaws,?And, as about her heart they whirl,?Her tattered cloak more tightly draws.
The flat brick walls look cold and bleak,?Her bare feet to the sidewalk freeze;?Yet dares she not a shelter seek,?Though faint with hunger and disease.
The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare,?And, piercing through her garments thin,?Beats on her shrunken breast, and there?Makes colder the cold heart within.
She lingers where a ruddy glow?Streams outward through an open shutter,?Adding more bitterness to woe,?More loneliness to desertion utter.
One half the cold she had not felt?Until she saw this gush of light?Spread warmly forth, and seem to melt?Its slow way through the deadening night.
She hears a woman's voice within,?Singing sweet words her childhood knew,?And years of misery and sin?Furl off, and leave her heaven blue.
Her freezing heart, like one who sinks?Outwearied in the drifting snow.?Drowses to deadly sleep and thinks?No longer of its hopeless woe;
Old fields, and clear blue summer days,?Old meadows, green with grass, and trees?That shimmer through the trembling haze?And whiten in the western breeze.
Old faces, all the friendly past?Rises within her heart again,?And sunshine from her childhood cast?Makes summer of the icy rain.
Enhaloed by a mild, warm glow,?From man's humanity