To starve and freeze on this lonely sea:
I ween, the Lords of the Admiralty
Would rather send than come."
Oh! whether we starve to death alone,
Or sail to our own country,
We have done what man has never done—
The truth is founded, the secret won-
We passed the Northern Sea!"
TO THE MEMORY OF M. A. R.
WITH the mild light some unambitious star
Illumes her pathway through the heavenly blue,—
So unobtrusive that the careless view
Scarce notes her where her haughtier sisters are,—
So ran thy life. Perhaps, from those afar,
Thy gentle radiance little wonder drew,
And all their praise was for the brighter few.
Yet mortal vision is a grievous bar
To perfect judgment. Were the distance riven,
Our eyes might find that star so faintly shone
Because it journeyed through a higher zone,
Had more majestic sway and duties given,
Far loftier station on the heights of heaven,
Was next to God, and circled round his throne.
I WONDER, darling, if there does not wear
Something from love, with love's so daily use,—
If in the sweetness of his vigorous juice
Time's bitter finger dips not here and there.
What thing of earthly growth itself can bear
Above its nature, overrule abuse,
And, like the marvel of the widow's cruse,
Freshen its taint, and all its loss repair?
I can but wonder at the faithful heart
That makes thy face so joyous in my sight, And fills each moment with a new delight. I can but wonder at the shades that start
Across thy features as we stand to-night, With lips thus clinging, in the act to part.
ABSENCE from thee is something worse than death;
For, to the heart that slumbers in the shroud,
What are the mourners' tears and clamours loud,
The open grave, the dismal cypress-wreath ?
The quiet body misses not its breath;
The pain that shivers through the weeping crowd
Is idle homage to the visage proud
That changeth not for all Affliction saith.
But to be thus, from thee so far away,
Is as though I, in seeming death, might be
Conscious of all that passed about my clay;
As though I saw my doleful obsequy,
Mourned my own loss, rebelled against decay,
And felt thy tear-drops trickling over me.
JAMES BAYARD TAYLOR.
[Born in 1825. Best known in this country as a traveller: between the summer of 1851 and the close of 1853 he went round the world, and has made various other long tours, including an early experience of the gold-fields of California. His Poems of the Orient, published in 1854, and various other works in verse and prose, are the result of his travels. Mr. Taylor has also been one of the editors of the New York Tribune].
METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE PINE.
As when the haze of some wan moonlight makes
Familiar fields a land of mystery,
Where all is changed, and some new presence wakes
In flower, and bush, and tree,—
Another life the life of day o'erwhelms ;
The past from present consciousness takes hue, And we remember vast and cloudy realms
Our feet have wandered through :
So, oft, some moonlight of the mind makes dumb
The stir of outer thought: wide-open seems
The gate wherethrough strange sympathies have come,
The secret of our dreams;
The source of fine impressions, shooting deep
Below the failing plummet of the sense;
Which strike beyond all time, and backward sweep
Through all intelligence.
We touch the lower life of beast and clod,
And the long process of the ages see
From blind old Chaos, ere the breath of God
Moved it to harmony.
All outward wisdom yields to that within,
Whereof nor creed nor canon holds the key;
We only feel that we have ever been,
And evermore shall be ;
And thus I know, by memories unfurled
In rarer moods, and many a nameless sign, That once in time, and somewhere in the world, I was a towering Pine,
Rooted upon a cape that overhung
The entrance to a mountain-gorge; whereon
The wintry shadow of a peak was flung,
Long after rise of sun.
Behind, the silent snows; and, wide below,
The rounded hills made level, lessening down
To where a river washed with sluggish flow
A many-templed town.
There did I clutch the granite with firm feet,
There shake my boughs above the roaring gulf,
When mountain whirlwinds through the passes beat,
And howled the mountain wolf.
There did I louder sing than all the floods
Whirled in white foam adown the precipice,
And the sharp sleet that stung the naked woods
Answer with sullen hiss.
But, when the peaceful clouds rose white and high
On blandest airs that April skies could bring,
Through all my fibres thrilled the tender sigh,
The sweet unrest of Spring.
She, with warm fingers laced in mine, did melt
In fragrant balsam my reluctant blood;
And with a smart of keen delight I felt
The sap in every bud,
And tingled through my rough old bark, and fast Pushed out the younger green, that smoothed my tones,
When last year's needles to the wind I cast,
And shed my scaly cones.
I held the eagle, till the mountain mist
Rolled from the azure paths he came to soar,
And, like a hunter, on my gnarlèd wrist
The dappled falcon bore.
Poised o'er the blue abyss, the morning lark
Sang, wheeling near in rapturous carouse,
And hart and hind, soft-pacing through the dark,
Slept underneath my boughs.
Down on the pasture-slopes the herdsman lay,
And for the flock his birchen trumpet blew;
There ruddy children tumbled in their play,
And lovers came to woo.
And once an army, crowned with triumph, came
Out of the hollow bosom of the gorge,
With mighty banners in the wind aflame,
Borne on a glittering surge
Of tossing spears, a flood that homeward rolled,
While cymbals timed their steps of victory,
And horn and clarion from their throats of gold
Sang with a savage glee.
I felt the mountain-walls below me shake,
Vibrant with sound, and through my branches poured
The glorious gust: my song thereto did make
Magnificent accord.
Some blind harmonic instinct pierced the rind
Of that slow life which made me straight and high,
And I became a harp for every wind,
When fierce autumnal gales began to blow,
Roaring all day in concert hoarse and deep;
And then made silent with my weight of snow,—
A spectre on the steep;
Filled with a whispering gush, like that which flows Through organ-stops, when sank the sun's red disk Beyond the city, and in blackness rose
Or breathing soft, as one who sighs in prayer,
Mysterious sounds of portent and of might,
What time I felt the wandering waves of air
Pulsating through the night.
And thus for centuries my rhythmic chant
Rolled down the gorge or surged about the hill:
Gentle, or stern, or sad, or jubilant,
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