Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 1 | Page 5

Love's twilight hours,

Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan
Above her nightly closing flowers,

Sweeter than that which sighed of yore
Along the charmed
Ausonian shore!
Even she, our own weird heroine,
Sole Pythoness
of ancient Lynn,'
Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;
And the

wide realm of sorcery,
Left by its latest mistress free,
Hath found
no gray and skilled invader.
So--perished Albion's "glammarye,"

With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,
His charmed torch beside his
knee,
That even the dead himself might see
The magic scroll within
his keeping.
And now our modern Yankee sees
Nor omens, spells,
nor mysteries;
And naught above, below, around,
Of life or death,
of sight or sound,
Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
Excites his
terror or surprise,
All seeming to his knowing eyes
Familiar as his
"catechise,"
Or "Webster's Spelling-Book."
1833.
THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.
THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
And eats his meat and
drinks his ale,
And beats the maid with her unused broom,
And the
lazy lout with his idle flail;
But he sweeps the floor and threshes the
corn,
And hies him away ere the break of dawn.
The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
And the Cocklane ghost
from the barn-loft cheer,
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,

Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
And the devil of Martin Luther sat

By the stout monk's side in social chat.
The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
Who seven times crossed
the deep,
Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
Like the
nightmare in one's sleep.
But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast

The evil weight from his back at last.
But the demon that cometh day by day
To my quiet room and fireside
nook,
Where the casement light falls dim and gray
On faded
painting and ancient book,
Is a sorrier one than any whose names

Are chronicled well by good King James.
No bearer of burdens like Caliban,
No runner of errands like Ariel,

He comes in the shape of a fat old man,

Without rap of knuckle or

pull of bell;
And whence he comes, or whither he goes,
I know as I
do of the wind which blows.
A stout old man with a greasy hat
Slouched heavily down to his dark,
red nose,
And two gray eyes enveloped in fat,
Looking through
glasses with iron bows.
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can,

Guard well your doors from that old man!
He comes with a careless "How d' ye do?"
And seats himself in my
elbow-chair;
And my morning paper and pamphlet new
Fall
forthwith under his special care,
And he wipes his glasses and clears
his throat,
And, button by button, unfolds his coat.
And then he reads from paper and book,
In a low and husky asthmatic
tone,
With the stolid sameness of posture and look
Of one who
reads to himself alone;
And hour after hour on my senses come

That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.
The price of stocks, the auction sales,
The poet's song and the lover's
glee,
The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,
The marriage list,
and the jeu d'esprit,
All reach my ear in the self-same tone,--
I
shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!
Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
O'er the mossy roots of some
forest tree,
The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
Or sound of
flutes o'er a moonlight sea,
Or the low soft music, perchance, which
seems
To float through the slumbering singer's dreams,
So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,
Of her in whose features I
sometimes look,
As I sit at eve by her side alone,
And we read by
turns, from the self-same book,
Some tale perhaps of the olden time,

Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.
Then when the story is one of woe,--
Some prisoner's plaint through
his dungeon-bar,
Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low
Her

voice sinks down like a moan afar;
And I seem to hear that prisoner's
wail,
And his face looks on me worn and pale.
And when she reads some merrier song,
Her voice is glad as an April
bird's,
And when the tale is of war and wrong,
A trumpet's
summons is in her words,
And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear,

And see the tossing of plume and spear!
Oh, pity me then, when, day by day,
The stout fiend darkens my
parlor door;
And reads me perchance the self-same lay
Which
melted in music, the night before,
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,

And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet!
I cross my floor with a nervous tread,
I whistle and laugh and sing
and shout,
I flourish my cane above his head,
And stir up the fire to
roast him out;
I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane,
And press
my hands on my ears, in vain!
I've studied Glanville and James the wise,
And wizard black-letter
tomes which treat
Of demons of every name and size
Which a
Christian man is presumed to meet,
But never a hint and never a line

Can I find of a reading fiend like mine.
I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate,
And laid the Primer
above them all,
I've nailed a horseshoe over