TO A PINE-TREE. FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest, In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, When whole mountains swoop valeward. 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. Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, Thou alone know'st the splendour of winter, Thou alone know'st the glory of summer, Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest, SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES. O, WANDERING dim on the extremest edge Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry, Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. How far are ye from the innocent, from those Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows, Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves!— Your souls partake its influence, not in vain A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Where ye grope darkly-ye who never knew Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue! One band ye cannot break-the force that clips The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; Yet they who watch your God-compelled return Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods. TO THE PAST. WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls, There all is hushed and breathless, There sits drear Egypt, 'mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, 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 Still as a city buried 'neath the sea, Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, And yet the eternal sorrow 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 lips Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships 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 Thy mighty clamours, wars, and world-noised deeds Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds Thy forms and creeds have vanished, Whatever of true life there was in thee Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery, For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share Our martyrdoms and toils; The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair That made the old time splendid. TO THE FUTURE. O LAND OF PROMISE! from what Pisgah's height G Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped gold, Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold And blazing precipices, Whence but a scanty leap it seems to heaven, Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more unstinted blisses. Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom leaps, As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart, Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart, The hurrying feet, the curses without number, Of thine exulting vision, Out of its very cares woos charms for peace and slumber. Grows young and noble; unto thee the Oppressor The eternal law, Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading. What undreamed ecstasies for blissful song! It throbs and leaps ; The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother. To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit free; To thee the Poet 'mid his toil aspires, And grief and hunger climb about his knee, |