Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 195

Table of Contents

Ye who, passing graves by night,

Glance not to the left or right,

Lest a spirit should arise,

Cold and white, to freeze your eyes,

Some weak phantom, which your doubt

Shapes upon the dark without

From the dark within, a guess

At the spirit's deathlessness,

Which ye entertain with fear

In your self-built dungeon here, 10

Where ye sell your God-given lives

Just for gold to buy you gyves—

Ye without a shudder meet

In the city's noonday street,

Spirits sadder and more dread

Than from out the clay have fled,

Buried, beyond hope of light,

In the body's haunted night!

See ye not that woman pale?

There are bloodhounds on her trail! 20

Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean,

(For the soul their scent is keen,)

Want and Sin, and Sin is last.

They have followed far and fast;

Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,

Sin awakened with a growl.

Ah, poor girl! she had a right

To a blessing from the light;

Title-deeds to sky and earth

God gave to her at her birth; 30

But, before they were enjoyed,

Poverty had made them void,

And had drunk the sunshine up

From all nature's ample cup,

Leaving her a first-born's share

In the dregs of darkness there.

Often, on the sidewalk bleak,

Hungry, all alone, and weak,

She has seen, in night and storm,

Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm, 40

Which, outside the window-glass,

Doubled all the cold, alas!

Till each ray that on her fell

Stabbed her like an icicle,

And she almost loved the wail

Of the bloodhounds on her trail.

Till the floor becomes her bier,

She shall feel their pantings near,

Close upon her very heels,

Spite of all the din of wheels; 50

Shivering on her pallet poor,

She shall hear them at the door

Whine and scratch to be let in,

Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!

Hark! that rustle of a dress,

Stiff with lavish costliness!

Here comes one whose cheek would flush

But to have her garment brush

'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin

Wove the weary broidery in, 60

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; 70

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 80

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,

'Tis a marketable ware. 90

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, 100

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; 110

All night long he sees its eyes

Flicker with foul ecstasies,

As the spirit ebbs away

Into the absorbing clay.

Who is he that skulks, afraid

Of the trust he has betrayed,

Shuddering if perchance a gleam

Of old nobleness should stream

Through the pent, unwholesome room,

Where his shrunk soul cowers in gloom, 120

Spirit sad beyond the rest

By more Instinct for the best?

'Tis a poet who was sent

For a bad world's punishment,

By compelling it to see

Golden glimpses of To Be,

By compelling it to hear

Songs that prove the angels near;

Who was sent to be the tongue

Of the weak and spirit-wrung, 130

Whence the fiery-winged Despair

In men's shrinking eyes might flare.

'Tis our hope doth fashion us

To base use or glorious:

He who might have been a lark

Of Truth's morning, from the dark

Raining down melodious hope

Of a freer, broader scope,

Aspirations, prophecies,

Of the spirit's full sunrise, 140

Chose to be a bird of night,

That, with eyes refusing light,

Hooted from some hollow tree

Of the world's idolatry.

'Tis his punishment to hear

Sweep of eager pinions near,

And his own vain wings to feel

Drooping downward to his heel,

All their grace and import lost,

Burdening his weary ghost: 150

Ever walking by his side

He must see his angel guide,

Who at intervals doth turn

Looks on him so sadly stern,

With such ever-new surprise

Of hushed anguish in her eyes,

That it seems the light of day

From around him shrinks away,

Or drops blunted from the wall

Built around him by his fall. 160

Then the mountains, whose white peaks

Catch the morning's earliest streaks,

He must see, where prophets sit,

Turning east their faces lit,

Whence, with footsteps beautiful,

To the earth, yet dim and dull,

They the gladsome tidings bring

Of the sunlight's hastening:

Never can these hills of bliss 169

Be o'erclimbed by feet like his!

But enough! Oh, do not dare

From the next the veil to tear,

Woven of station, trade, or dress,

More obscene than nakedness,

Wherewith plausible culture drapes

Fallen Nature's myriad shapes!

Let us rather love to mark

How the unextingnished spark

Still gleams through the thin disguise 179

Of our customs, pomps, and lies,

And, not seldom blown to flame,

Vindicates its ancient claim.