My God! when I read o'er the bitter lives Dwelt only in the excellence of truth; of men whose eager hearts were quite too And far within old Darkness' hostile lines great Advanced and pitched the shining tents of To beat beneath the cramped mode of the Light. day, Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell, And see them mocked at by the world they That not the least among his many love, claims Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths To deathless honor - he was Milton's Of that reform which their hard toil will friend, make A man not second among those who lived The common birthright of the age to To show us that the poet's lyre demands come, An arm of tougher sinew than the sword. When I see this, spite of my faith in God, I marvel how their hearts bear up so long; Nor could they but for this same prophecy, A CHIPPEWA LEGEND This inward feeling of the glorious end. αλγεινά μέν μοι και λέγειν εστίν τάδε, “Deem me not fond; but in my warmer άλγος δε σιγαν. youth, ÆSCHYLUS, Prom. Vinct. 197, 198. Ere my heart's bloom was soiled and brushed For the leading incidents in this tale I am away, indebted to the very valuable Algic Researches I had great dreams of mighty things to of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq. J. R. L. come; Of conquest, whether by the sword or pen The old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his I knew not; but some conquest I would end, have, Called his two eldest children to his side, Or else swift death: now wiser grown in And gave them, in few words, his parting years, charge! I find youth's dreams are but the flutterings · My son and daughter, me ye see no more; Of those strong wings whereon the soul The happy hunting - grounds await me, shall soar green In after time to win a starry throne; With change of spring and summer through And so I cherish them, for they were lots, Which I, a boy, cast in the helm of Fate. But, for remembrance, after I am gone, Now will I draw them, since a man's right Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake: hand, Weakling he is and young, and knows not A right hand guided by an earnest soul, yet With a true instinct, takes the golden To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow; prize Therefore of both your loves he hath more From out a thousand blanks. What men need, call luck And he, who needeth love, to love hath Is the prerogative of valiant souls, right; The fealty life pays its rightful kings. It is not like our furs and stores of corn, The helm is shaking now, and I will stay Whereto we claim sole title by our toil, To pluck iny lot forth; it were sin to flee!” But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts, And waters it, and gives it sun, to be So they two turned together; one to die, The common stock and heritage of all: Fighting for freedom on the bloody field; Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourThe other, far more happy, to become selves A name earth wears forever next her heart; May not be left deserted in your need.” One of the few that have a right to rank With the true Makers: for his spirit Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood, wrought Far from the other dwellings of their tribe; Order from Chaos; proved that right di- And, after many moons, the loneliness vine Wearied the elder brother, and he said, the year: Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care. So she went forth and sought the haunts of men, And, being wedded, in her household cares, Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot The little Sheemah and her father's charge. “Why should I dwell here far from men, shut out From the free, natural joys that fit my age ? Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to hunt, Patient of toil and hunger, and not yet Have seen the danger which I dared not look Full in the face; what hinders me to be A mighty Brave and Chief among my kin?” So, taking up his arrows and his bow, As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on, Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe, Where, choosing out a bride, he soon for got, In all the fret and bustle of new life, The little Sheemah and his father's charge. a Now when the sister found her brother gone, And that, for many days, he came not back, She wept for Sheemah more than for her self; For Love bides longest in a woman's heart, And flutters many times before he flies, And then doth perch so nearly, that a word May lure him back to his accustomed nest; And Duty lingers even when Love is gone, Oft looking out in hope of his return; And, after Duty hath been driven forth, Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all, Warming her lean bands at the lonely hearth, And crouching o'er the embers, to shut out Whatever paltry warmth and light are left, With avaricious greed, from all beside. So, for long months, the sister hunted wide, And cared for little Sheemah tenderly; But, daily more and more, the loneliness Grew wearisome, and to herself she sighed, “Am I not fair ? at least the glassy pool, That bath no cause to flatter, tells me so; But, oh, how fat and meaningless the tale, Unless it tremble on a lover's tongue ! Beauty hath no true glass, except it be In the sweet privacy of loving eyes.” Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore Which she had learned of nature and the woods, That beanty's chief reward is to itself, And that Love's mirror holds no image long Save of the inward fairness, blurred and lost But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, Thinking each rustle was his sister's step, Till hope grew less and less, and then went out, And every sound was changed from hope to fear. Few sounds there were:- the dropping of a nut, The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream, Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer, Heard at long intervals, seemed but to make The dreadful void of silence silenter. Soon what small store bis sister left was gone, And, through the Autumn, he made shift to live On roots and berries, gathered in much fear Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard ofttimes, Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night. But Winter came at last, and, when the snow, Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er hill and plain, Spread its unbroken silence over all, Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean (More sick at heart than Ruth, and all alone) After the harvest of the merciless wolf, Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, A thing more wild and starving than him self; Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew friends, And shared together all the winter through. yet feared Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone, The elder brother, fishing in the lake, Upon whose edge his father's wigwam stood, STANZAS ON FREEDOM Heard a low moaning noise upon the shore: Half like a child it seemed, half like a wolf, And straightway there was something in his heart That said, “It is thy brother Sheemah's voice." So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw, Within a little thicket close at hand, A child that seemed fast changing to a wolf, From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hair, That still crept on and upward as he looked. The face was turned away, but well he knew That it was Sheemah's, even his brother's face. Then with his trembling hands he hid his eyes, And bowed his head, so that he might not MEN ! whose boast it is that ye Women ! who shall one day bear see Is true Freedom but to break me ! They are slaves who fear to speak For the famen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three. The first look of his brother's eyes, and cried, “O Sheemah! O my brother, speak to Dost thou not know me, that I am thy brother? Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shalt dwell With me henceforth, and know no care or want!" Sheemah was silent for a space, as if 'T were hard to summon up a human voice, And, when he spake, the voice was as a wolf's: “I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st; I have none other brethren than the wolves, And, till thy heart be changed from what it is, Thou art not worthy to be called their kin." Then groaned the other, with a choking tongue, “Alas! my heart is changed right bitterly; 'T is shrunk and parched within me even And, looking upward fearfully, he saw Only a wolf that shrank away and ran, Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods. COLUMBUS I have partly written a poem on Columbus to match with Prometheus and Cromwell. I like it better than either in point of artistic merit. J. R. L. to C. F. Briggs, September 18, 1844. The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, With wbims of sudden hush; the reeling now !” sea Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern, Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, falling law, my soul man Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, down And made the firm-based heart, that would The broad backs of the waves, which jostle bave quailed and crowd The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf To fling themselves upon that unknown Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its shore, stem. Their used familiar since the dawn of The wicked and the weak, by some dark time, Whither this foredoomed life is guided on Have a strange power to shut and rivet To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring down poise Their own horizon round us, to unwing One glittering moment, then to break ful- Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur filled. With surly clouds the Future’s gleaming peaks, How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, Far seen across the brine of thankless The melancholy wash of endless waves, years. The sigh of some grim monster undescried, If the chosen soul could never be alone Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine ! No greatness ever had been dreamed or Yet night brings more companions than the done; day Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; To this drear waste; new constellations The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. burn, And fairer stars, with whose calm height The old world is effete; there man with Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, Of eartben souls, whose vision's scanty ring Life is trod underfoot, Life, the one Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings block Against the cold bars of their unbelief, Of marble that's youchsafed wherefrom to Knowing in vain my own free heaven beyond. Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to O God! this world, so crammed with eager shine down life, The future, Life, the irredeemable block, That comes and goes and wanders back to Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars, silence Scanting our room to cut the features out Like the idle wind, which yet man's shap- Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown ing mind With a mean head the perfect limbs, or Can make his drudge to swell the longing leave sails The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, Of highest endeavor, - this mad, unthrift Failure's brief epitaph. world, Which, every hour, throws life enough Yes, Europe's world away Reels on to judgment; there the common To make her deserts kind and hospitable, need, Lets her great destinies be waved aside Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond By smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels, 'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowl. Who weigh the God they not believe with ingly gold, O’er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, And find no spot in Judas, save that he, Knit strongly with eternal fibres up Driving a duller bargain than he ought, Of all men's separate and united weals, Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent. Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as O Faith ! if thou art strong, thine opposite light, Is mighty also, and the dull fool's sneer Holds up a shape of large Humanity Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the To which by natural instinct every man Pays loyalty exulting, by which all carve arin war of men a Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses Yet he therein can feel a virtue left filled By the sad pressure of a mother's hand, With the red, fiery blood of the general And unto him it still is tremulous life, With palpitating haste and wet with tears, Making them mighty in peace, as now in The key to him of hope and humanness, The coarse shell of life's pearl, Expectancy: They are, even in the flush of victory, This hope hath been to me for love and weak, fame, Conquering that manhood which should Hath made me wholly lonely on the earth, them subdue. Building me up as in a thick-ribbed tower, And what gift bring I to this untried Where with enwalled my watching spirit world ? burned, Shall the same tragedy be played anew, Conquering its little island from the Dark, And the same lurid curtain drop at last Sole as a scholar's lamp, and heard men's On one dread desolation, one fierce crash steps, Of that recoil which on its nakers God In the far hurry of the outward world, Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, Pass dimly forth and back, sounds heard in Early or late ? Or shall that common dream. wealth As Ganymede by the eagle was snatched Whose potent unity and concentric force up Can draw these scattered joints and parts From the gross sod to be Jove's cup-bearer, So was I lifted by my great design: Into a whole ideal man once more, And who hath trod Olympus, from his eye Which sucks not from its limbs the life Fades not that broader outlook of the gods; away, His life's low valleys overbrow earth's But sends it flood-tide and creates itself clouds, Over again in every citizen, And that Olympian spectre of the past Be there built up ? For me, I have no Looms towering up in sovereign memory, choice; Beckoning his soul from meaner heights of I might turn back to other destinies, doom. For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors; Had but the shadow of the Thunderer's But whoso answers not God's earliest call bird, Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme Flashing athwart my spirit, made of me Of lying open to his genius A swift-betraying vision's Ganymede, Which makes the wise heart certain of its Yet to have greatly dreamed precludes low ends. ends; Great days have ever such a morning-red, Here am I; for what end God knows, not I; On such a base great futures are built up, Westward still points the inexorable soul: And aspiration, though not put in act, Here am I, with no friend but the sad sea, Comes back to ask its plighted troth again, The beating heart of this great enterprise, Still watches round its grave the unlaid Which, without me, would stiffen in swift ghost death; Of a dead virtue, and makes other hopes, This have I mused on, since mine eye could Save that implacable one, seem thin and first bleak Among the stars distinguish and with joy As shadows of bare trees upon the snow, Rest on that God-fed Pharos of the north, Bound freezing there by the unpitying On some blue promontory of heaven lighted That juts far out into the upper sea; To this one hope my heart hath clung for While other youths perplexed their mandoyears, lins, As would a foundling to the talisman Praying that Thetis would ber fingers Hung round his neck by hands he knew not twine whose; In the loose glories of her lover's hair, A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside, And wile another kiss to keep back day, moon. |
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