From square to square with tiger leaps panted the lustful fire, The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire; And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee, Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea. Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look; His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook; He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once He did of old. THE SOWER I SAW a Sower walking slow It seemed he was both deaf and blind. His dim face showed no soul beneath, That once had held Excalibur. I heard, as still the seed he cast, How, crooning to himself, he sung, "I sow again the holy Past, The happy days when I was young. "Then all was wheat without a tare, Then all was righteous, fair, and true; And I am he whose thoughtful care Shall plant the Old World in the New. "The fruitful germs I scatter free, With busy hand, while all men sleep; In Europe now, from sea to sea, The nations bless me as they reap." Then I looked back along his path, And heard the clash of steel on steel, Where man faced man, in deadly wrath, While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal. The sky with burning towns flared red, Crept curdling over pavements cold. Then marked I how each germ of truth I shouted, but he could not hear; Long to my straining ears the blast Brought faintly back the words he sung: Fence as you please, this plain poor man, Owns you, and fences as is fit. Though yours the rents, his incomes wax By right of eminent domain; From factory tall to woodman's axe, All things on earth must pay their tax, To feed his hungry heart and brain. He takes you from your easy-chair, And what he plans that you must do; You sleep in down, eat dainty fare, He mounts his crazy garret-stair And starves, the landlord over you. Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil. Your lands, with force or cunning got, TO A PINE-TREE Lowell's friend C. F. Briggs called the poet's attention to Coleridge's lines in The Ancient Mariner, "And ice, mast high, came floating by crags as perhaps the literary justification of " of green ice" in the penultimate stanza of this poem, but maintained nevertheless that the epithet green was not true to nature. In his reply Lowell wrote: "I did not have Coleridge's lines in my mind when I wrote my verses. Coleridge had a fine, true eye, and I would gladly accept him (if I wanted any aid) in confirmation. I did trust my own eye. When I was a boy, my favorite sport was sailing upon Fresh Pond in summer, and in winter helping the hardy reapers to get in their harvest of ice, and never was a field of wheat in July of a more lovely green. You have doubtless seen ice-bugs (as most people entomologically pronounce it), and they may not be green, though I think they are described as of all colors. But my ice was fresh-water ice, and I am right about it." FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest, Purple-blue with the distance and vast; Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest, That hangs poised on a lull in the blast, To its fall leaning awful. In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches, When whole mountains swoop valeward. In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings implor ing, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring From the city beneath him. To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, Till he longs to be swung mid their booming In the tents of the Arabs of ocean, Whose finned isles are their cattle. For the gale snatches thee for his lyre, Whose arms stretch to his playmate. The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches, Swooping thence on the continent under; Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches, There awaiteth his leap the fierce thun der, Growling low with impatience. Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, Lusty father of Titans past number! The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary, Nestling close to thy branches in slumber, And thee mantling with silence. Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter, Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices, Hearing crags of green ice groan and splin ter, And then plunge down the muffled Looking within myself, I note how thin abysses In the quiet of midnight. Thou alone know'st the glory of summer, Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest, On thy subjects that send a proud mur A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands Of Asia's long-quenched glory. Still as a city buried 'neath the sea Thy courts and temples stand; Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently Into Time's gnawing river. Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, In their unmonarched eyes says day is done O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, The shapes that haunt thy gloom Make signs to us and move their withered lipe Across the gulf of doom; Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships On the mirage's ocean. And if sometimes a moaning wandereth If some grim shadow of thy living death And scares the world to error, The eternal life sends forth melodious breath To chase the misty terror. Thy mighty clamors, wars, and worldnoised deeds Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds Beneath some sudden gust; Whatever of true life there was in thee |