The Iron Gate and Other Poems | Page 4

plumes along the waves are scattered;?Helpless the wing that braved the tempest lies.
He sees his comrades high above him flying?To seek their nests among the island reeds;?Strong is their flight; all lonely he is lying?Washed by the crimsoned water as he bleeds.
O Thou who carest for the falling sparrow,?Canst Thou the sinless sufferer's pang forget??Or is thy dread account-book's page so narrow?Its one long column scores thy creatures' debt?
Poor gentle guest, by nature kindly cherished,?A world grows dark with thee in blinding death;?One little gasp--thy universe has perished,?Wrecked by the idle thief who stole thy breath!
Is this the whole sad story of creation,?Lived by its breathing myriads o'er and o'er,--?One glimpse of day, then black annihilation,--?A sunlit passage to a sunless shore?
Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes!?Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds?Happier was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes,?The stony convent with its cross and beads!
How often gazing where a bird reposes,?Rocked on the wavelets, drifting with the tide,?I lose myself in strange metempsychosis?And float a sea-fowl at a sea-fowl's side;
From rain, hail, snow in feathery mantle muffled,?Clear-eyed, strong-limbed, with keenest sense to hear?My mate soft murmuring, who, with plumes unruffled,?Where'er I wander still is nestling near;
The great blue hollow like a garment o'er me;?Space all unmeasured, unrecorded time;?While seen with inward eye moves on before me?Thought's pictured train in wordless pantomime.
A voice recalls me.--From my window turning?I find myself a plumeless biped still;?No beak, no claws, no sign of wings discerning,--?In fact with nothing bird-like but my quill.
ON THE THRESHOLD
INTRODUCTION TO A COLLECTION OF POEMS BYDIFFERENT AUTHORS
AN usher standing at the door?I show my white rosette;?A smile of welcome, nothing more,?Will pay my trifling debt;?Why should I bid you idly wait?Like lovers at the swinging gate?
Can I forget the wedding guest??The veteran of the sea??In vain the listener smites his breast,--?"There was a ship," cries he!?Poor fasting victim, stunned and pale,?He needs must listen to the tale.
He sees the gilded throng within,?The sparkling goblets gleam,?The music and the merry din?Through every window stream,?But there he shivers in the cold?Till all the crazy dream is told.
Not mine the graybeard's glittering eye?That held his captive still?To hold my silent prisoners by?And let me have my will;?Nay, I were like the three-years' child,?To think you could be so beguiled!
My verse is but the curtain's fold?That hides the painted scene,?The mist by morning's ray unrolled?That veils the meadow's green,?The cloud that needs must drift away?To show the rose of opening day.
See, from the tinkling rill you hear?In hollowed palm I bring?These scanty drops, but ah, how near?The founts that heavenward spring!?Thus, open wide the gates are thrown?And founts and flowers are all your own!
TO GEORGE PEABODY
DANVERS, 1866
BANKRUPT! our pockets inside out!?Empty of words to speak his praises!?Worcester and Webster up the spout!?Dead broke of laudatory phrases!?Yet why with flowery speeches tease,?With vain superlatives distress him??Has language better words than these??THE FRIEND OF ALL HIS RACE, GOD BLESS HIM!
A simple prayer--but words more sweet?By human lips were never uttered,?Since Adam left the country seat?Where angel wings around him fluttered.?The old look on with tear-dimmed eyes,?The children cluster to caress him,?And every voice unbidden cries,?THE FRIEND OF ALL HIS RACE, GOD BLESS HIM!
AT THE PAPYRUS CLUB
A LOVELY show for eyes to see?I looked upon this morning,--?A bright-hued, feathered company?Of nature's own adorning;?But ah! those minstrels would not sing?A listening ear while I lent,--?The lark sat still and preened his wing,?The nightingale was silent;?I longed for what they gave me not--?Their warblings sweet and fluty,?But grateful still for all I got?I thanked them for their beauty.
A fairer vision meets my view?Of Claras, Margarets, Marys,?In silken robes of varied hue,?Like bluebirds and canaries;?The roses blush, the jewels gleam,?The silks and satins glisten,?The black eyes flash, the blue eyes beam,?We look--and then we listen?Behold the flock we cage to-night--?Was ever such a capture??To see them is a pure delight;?To hear them--ah! what rapture!
Methinks I hear Delilah's laugh?At Samson bound in fetters;?"We captured!" shrieks each lovelier half,?"Men think themselves our betters!?We push the bolt, we turn the key?On warriors, poets, sages,?Too happy, all of them, to be?Locked in our golden cages!"?Beware! the boy with bandaged eyes?Has flung away his blinder;
He 's lost his mother--so he cries--?And here he knows he'll find her:?The rogue! 't is but a new device,--?Look out for flying arrows?Whene'er the birds of Paradise?Are perched amid the sparrows!
FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
DECEMBER 17, 1877
I BELIEVE that the copies of verses I've spun,?Like Scheherezade's tales, are a thousand and one;?You remember the story,--those mornings in bed,--?'T was the turn of a copper,--a tale or a head.
A doom like Scheherezade's falls upon me?In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree?I'm a florist in verse, and what would people say?If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?
It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows?Just the look