THE misspelt scrawl, upon the wall By some Pompeian idler traced, In ashes packed (ironie fact !) Lies eighteen centuries uneffaced, While many a page of bard and sage, Deemed once mankind's immortal gain, Lost from Time's ark, leaves no more mark Than a keel's furrow through the main.
O Chance and Change! our buzz's range Is scarcely wider than a fly's; Then let us play at fame to-day, To-morrow be unknown and wise; And while the fair beg locks of hair, And autographs, and Lord knows what, Quick! let' us scratch our
Make our brief blaze, and be forgot!
Too pressed to wait, upon her slate Fame writes a name or two in doubt; Scarce written, these no longer please, And her own finger rubs them out: It may ensue, fair girl, that you Years hence this yellowing leaf may see, And put to task, your memory ask In vain, "This Lowell, who was he?"
That floats for an instant 'twixt goblet and brain;
A breath-born perfection, half something, half naught,
And breaks if it strike the hard edge of a thought.
Do you ask me to make such? Ah no, not so simple;
Ask Apelles to paint you the ravishing dimple
Whose shifting enchantment lights Venus's cheek,
And the artist will tell you his skill is to seek;
Once fix it, 't is naught, for the charm of it rises
From the sudden bopeeps of its smiling surprises.
To Ticknor's and Longfellow's classical gown,
And profess four strange languages, which, luckless elf,
I speak like a native (of Cambridge) myself,
Let me beg, Mr. President, leave to propose A sentiment treading on nobody's toes, And give, in such ale as with pump-handles we brew,
Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew,
A toast that to deluge with water is good, For in Scripture they come in just after the flood:
I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir,
Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor,
The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the
HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES
WHAT know we of the world immense Beyond the narrow ring of sense? What should we know, who lounge about The house we dwell in, nor find out, Masked by a wall, the secret cell Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell? The winding stair that steals aloof To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?
It lies about us, yet as far From sense sequestered as a star New launched its wake of fire to trace In secrecies of unprobed space, Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears Might earthward haste a thousand years Nor reach it. So remote seems this World undiscovered, yet it is
A neighbor near and dumb as death, So near, we seem to feel the breath
he might have wished to preserve. Three of them were published before his death. Of the rest, two appear here for the first time. C. E. N."
Of its hushed habitants as they Pass us unchallenged, night and day.
Never could mortal ear nor eye By sound or sign suspect them nigh, Yet why may not some subtler sense Than those poor two give evidence? Transfuse the ferment of their being Into our own, past hearing, seeing, As men, if once attempered so, Far off each other's thought can know ? As horses with an instant thrill Measure their rider's strength of will? Comes not to all some glimpse that brings Strange sense of sense-escaping things? Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines ? Approaches, premonitions, signs, Voices of Ariel that die out
In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt ?
Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these Phantasmas of the silences
Outer or inner? — rude heirlooms From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, Who in unhuman Nature saw Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, And with those night-fears brute and blind Peopled the chaos of their mind, Which, in ungovernable hours,
Still make their bestial lair in ours?
With fruitage new, none else shall share: Sated with wavering in the Void, It backward climbs, so best employed, And, where no proof is nor can be, Seeks refuge with Analogy;
Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well With metaphysic midges sore,
My Thought seeks comfort at her door,
were they not? Yes; And, at her feet a suppliant cast,
Uncalled they come, unbid they go,
And leave us fumbling in a doubt Whether within us or without The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see As in a twi-life what it will,
And hath such wonder-working skill That what we deemed most solid-wrought Turns a mere figment of our thought, Which when we grasp at in despair Our fingers find vain semblance there, For Psyche seeks a corner-stone Firmer than aught to matter known.
Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show Made of the wish to have it so?
'T were something, even though this were all:
So the poor prisoner, on his wall Long gazing, from the chance designs Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines New and new pictures without cease, Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece: But these are Fancy's common brood Hatched in the nest of solitude; This is Dame Wish's hourly trade, By our rude sires a goddess made. Could longing, though its heart broke, give Trances in which we chiefly live? Moments that darken all beside, Tearfully radiant as a bride ? Beckonings of bright escape, of wings Purchased with loss of baser things? Blithe truancies from all control Of Hyle, outings of the soul?
The worm, by trustful instinct led, Draws from its womb a slender thread, And drops, confiding that the breeze Will waft it to unpastured trees: So the brain spins itself, and so Swings boldly off in hope to blow Across some tree of knowledge, fair
Evokes a spectre of the past.
Not such as shook the knees of Saul, But winsome, golden-gay withal, - Two fishes in a globe of glass, That pass, and waver, and re-pass, And lighten that way, and then this, Silent as meditation is. With a half-humorous smile I see In this their aimless industry, These errands nowhere and returns Grave as a pair of funeral urns, This ever-seek and never-find, A mocking image of my mind. But not for this I bade you climb Up from the darkening deeps of time: Help me to tame these wild day-mares That sudden on me unawares. Fish, do your duty, as did they Of the Black Island far away In life's safe places, far as you From all that now I see or do. You come, embodied flames, as when I knew you first, nor yet knew men; Your gold renews my golden days, Your splendor all my loss repays.
"T is more than sixty years ago Since first I watched your to-and-fro; Two generations come and gone From silence to oblivion,
With all their noisy strife and stress Lulled in the grave's forgivingness, While you unquenchably survive Immortal, almost more alive.
I watched you then a curious boy, Who in your beauty found fuli joy, And, by no problem-debts distrest, Sate at life's board a welcome guest. You were my sister's pets, not mine; But Property's dividing line No hint of dispossession drew On any map my simplesse knew; O golden age, not yet dethroned! What made me happy, that I owned;
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