A figure grim and rusty, Now even such men as Nature forms Who knows, thought I, but he has come, About that garb outlandish "I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword, As threadbare as my breeches: They understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces, Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! "We had some toughness in our grain, "He had stiff knees, the Puritan, He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten. "These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators When slavery grasped at Texas? Dumb on his knees was every one That now is bold as Cæsar; "I feel the soul in me draw near The streaks of first forewarning, "Child of our travail and our woe, I hear great steps, that through the shade And voices call like that which bade I looked, no form mine eyes could find, Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, And he will print my ditty. ON THE CAPTURE OF FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON In a letter to Edward M. Davis written from Elmwood July 24, 1845, Lowell says: "I blew another dolorous and jarring blast' in the Courier the other day, which you will probably see in the Liberator of this week or next. I was impelled to write by the account of the poor fugitives who were taken near Washington. I think it has done some good. At any rate, it has set two gentlemen together by the ears about Dissolution, and they are hammering away at each other in the Courier." The blast was the following stanzas. LOOK on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God! We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core; Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race. Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Did we but pay the love we owe, On all these living pages of God's book. THE GHOST-SEER This poem was printed March 8, 1845, in the Broadway Journal, edited by C. F. Briggs. In a letter accompanying the poem Lowell confesses his dissatisfaction with the execution as compared with the conception, and adds: "Written in the metre which I have chosen it is perhaps too long, but the plot would have sufficed for quite a long and elaborate poem, into which a good deal of reflection and experience might have been compressed." YE who, passing graves by night, Cold and white, to freeze your eyes, Some weak phantom, which your doubt Hark! that rustle of a dress, Here comes one whose cheek would flush 'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary broidery in, Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the silk might soil, And, in midnights chill and murk, Stitched her life into the work, Shaping from her bitter thought Heart's-ease and forget-me-not, Satirizing her despair With the emblems woven there. Little doth the wearer heed Of the heart-break in the brede; A hyena by her side Skulks, down-looking, it is Pride. He digs for her in the earth, Where lie all her claims of birth, With his foul paws rooting o'er Some long-buried ancestor, Who perhaps a statue won By the ill deeds he had done, By the innocent blood he shed, By the desolation spread Over happy villages, Blotting out the smile of peace. There walks Judas, he who sold Yesterday his Lord for gold, Sold God's presence in his heart For a proud step in the mart; He hath dealt in flesh and blood; At the bank his name is good; At the bank, and only there, 'T is a marketable ware. In his eyes that stealthy gleam Was not learned of sky or stream, But it has the cold, hard glint Of new dollars from the mint. Open now your spirit's eyes, Look through that poor clay disguise Which has thickened, day by day, Till it keeps all light at bay, And his soul in pitchy gloom Gropes about its narrow tomb, From whose dank and slimy walls Drop by drop the horror falls. Look! a serpent lank and cold Hugs his spirit fold on fold; From his heart, all day and night, It doth suck God's blessed light. Drink it will, and drink it must, Till the cup holds naught but dust; All day long he hears it hiss, Writhing in its fiendish bliss; All night long he sees its eyes Flicker with foul ecstasies, As the spirit ebbs away |