As we forget thou hast not always been, Mother of States and unpolluted men, Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen! AN ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876 I I. ENTRANCED I saw a vision in the cloud That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky, Full of fair shapes, half creatures of the eye, Half chance-evoked by the wind's fantasy In air-spun robes, of evanescent dye, Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was wound In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the whim Of some transmuting influence felt in me, And, looking now, a wolf I seemed to see Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hungerbold, Threatening her charge: resolve in every limb, Erect she flamed in mail of sun-wove gold, And her fierce eyes, by danger challenged, took Her trident - sceptred mother's dauntless look. "I know thee now, O goddess-born!" I cried, Seven years long was the bow Crash of navies and wave-borne thunder; And new stars were seen, a world's wonder; Each by her sisters made bright, 4. Stormy the day of her birth: Was she not born of the strong, She, the last ripeness of earth, Beautiful, prophesied long? II I. No praises of the past are hers, To Time's sad instinct in the breast: She also hath her monuments; scars And maunder of forgotten wars; She builds not on the ground, but in the mind, Her open-hearted palaces For larger-thoughted men with heaven and earth at ease: Her march the plump mow marks, the sleepless wheel, The golden sheaf, the self-swayed commonweal; The happy homesteads hid in orchard trees Whose sacrificial smokes through peaceful air Rise lost in heaven, the household's silent prayer; What architect hath bettered these? sees A thousand miles of neighbors side by side, In fame, and born beneath a milder star), That to Earth's orphans, far as curves the dome Of death-deaf sky, the bounteous West means home, With dear precedency of natural ties And if the nobler passions wane, Tempt from the proper race-course of the soul That crowns their patient breath Yet may she claim one privilege urbane Poets, as their heads grow gray, With care that whispers and forebodes: Nor this our triumph-day can blunt Megæra's goads. 2. Murmur of many voices in the air Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate, Where wisdom and not numbers should have weight, Seed-field of simpler manners, braver truth, Is this Atlantis? This the unpoisoned soil, What grew so fair, sole plant of love and light? Who sit where once in crowned seclusion sate Is this debating club where boys dispute, Brooded those bolts of thought that all the horizon knew? Of years had won me this unwelcome right To see things as they are, or shall be soon, In the frank prose of undissembling noon! The golden age is still the age that 's past: Of ancient wisdom channelled deep in law, I ask no drowsy opiate To dull my vision of that only state Founded on faith in man, and therefore The undaunted few Who changed the Old World for the New, And more devoutly prized Than all perfection theorized The more imperfect that had roots and grew. They founded deep and well, Those danger-chosen chiefs of men Who still believed in Heaven and Hell, In some fine flourish of a pen, To make a better man Than long-considering Nature will or can, And acting still on some fore-ordered plan, Too nicely poised to think or feel, Dumb motor in a clock-like commonweal. As if he must be other than he seems Because he was not what he should be here, Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams: Yet herein they were great Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of yore, And wiser than the wisdom of the shelf, That they conceived a deeper-rooted state, Of hardier growth, alive from rind to core, By making man sole sponsor of himself. 3. God of our fathers, Thou who wast, Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who flout Thy secret presence shall be lost In the great light that dazzles them to doubt, We, sprung from loins of stalwart men That Thou wouldst make thy dwelling in their dust And walk with those a fellow-citizen We, who believe Life's bases rest They steered by stars the elder shipmen Sure that, while lasts the immutable de knew, And laid their courses where the currents draw cree, The land to Human Nature dear Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. HEARTSEASE AND RUE THIS title was given to the volume of poems collected and published in 1888 after Lowell's return to private life. He took occasion to I. FRIENDSHIP AGASSIZ Come Dicesti egli ebbe non viv' egli ancora? Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome? 66 came Lowell was in Florence when Agassiz died, and sent this poem home to Mr. Norton for "His death," he says, publication. home to me in a singular way, growing into my consciousness from day to day as if it were a graft new-set, that by degrees became part of my own wood and drew a greater share of my sap than belonged to it, as grafts sometimes will. I suppose that, unconsciously to myself, a great part of the ferment it produced in me was owing to the deaths of my sister Anna [Mrs. Charles R. Lowell], of Mrs., whom I knew as a child in my early manhood, and of my cousin Amory, who was inextricably bound up with the primal associations of my life, associations which always have a singular sweetness for me. A very deep chord had been touched also at Florence by the sight of our old lodgings in the Casa Guidi, of the balcony Mabel used to run on, and the windows we used to look out at so long ago. I got sometimes into the mood I used to be in when I was always repeating to myself, verses which seem to me desolately pathetic. At last I began to hum over bits of my poem in my head till it took complete possession of me and worked me up to a delicious state of excitement, all the more delicious as my brain (or at any rate the musical part of it) had been lying dormant so long. My old trick of seeing things with my eyes shut after I had gone to bed (I mean whimsical things utterly alien to the train of my thoughts- for example, a hospital ward with a long row of white, untenanted beds, and on the farthest a pile of those little wooden dolls with redpainted slippers) revived in full force. Nervous, horribly nervous, but happy for the first time (I mean consciously happy) since I glean after his earlier harvest and preserved in it several poems written before the publication of Under the Willows. came over here. And so by degrees my poem worked itself out. The parts came to me as I came awake, and I wrote them down in the morning. I had all my bricks - but the mortar would n't set, as the masons say. However, I got it into order at last. You will see there is a logical sequence if you look sharp. It was curious to me after it was done to see how fleshly it was. This impression of Agassiz had wormed itself into my consciousness, and without my knowing it had colored my whole poem. I could not help feeling how, if I had been writing of Emerson, for example, I should have been quite otherwise ideal. But there it is, and you can judge for yourself. I think there is some go in it somehow, but it is too near me yet to be judged fairly by me. It is old-fashioned, you see, but none the worse for that." The poem was dated February, 1874. |