Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 223

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Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be

That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest

Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea,

Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest,

As on an altar—can it be that ye

Have wasted inspiration on dead ears,

Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?

The people's heart is like a harp for years

Hung where some petrifying torrent rains

Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords 10

Faint and more faint make answer to the tears

That drip upon them: idle are all words:

Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone

Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: doth Freedom, then, consist

In musing with our faces toward the Past,

While petty cares and crawling interests twist

Their spider-threads about us, which at last

Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind

In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20

Freedom is re-created year by year,

In hearts wide open on the Godward side,

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere,

In minds that sway the future like a tide.

He broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes;

She chooses men for her august abodes,

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn;

Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few

Light footprints, leading mornward through the dew:

Before the day had risen, she was gone. 30

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on,

And, if our steps should slacken in despair,

Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair,

Forever yielding, never wholly won:

That is not love which pauses in the race

Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace;

Freedom gained yesterday is no more ours;

Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers;

Still there's a charm uugranted, still a grace,

Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, 40

Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall;

'Tis but a fragment of ourselves is gained,

The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm,

Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see

On either side of him the imprisoning sea,

Beholds, above the clouds that overwhelm

The valley-land, peak after snowy peak

Stretch out of sight, each like a silver helm

Beneath its plume of smoke, sublime and bleak, 50

And what he thought an island finds to be

A continent to him first oped—so we

Can from our height of Freedom look along

A boundless future, ours if we be strong;

Or if we shrink, better remount our ships

And, fleeing God's express design, trace back

The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track

To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse.

* * * * *

Therefore of Europe now I will not doubt,

For the broad foreheads surely win the day, 60

And brains, not crowns or soul-gelt armies, weigh

In Fortune's scales: such dust she brushes out.

Most gracious are the conquests of the Word,

Gradual and silent as a flower's increase,

And the best guide from old to new is Peace—

Yet, Freedom, than canst sanctify the sword!

Bravely to do whate'er the time demands,

Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch,

This is the task that fits heroic hands;

So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. 70

I do not love the Peace which tyrants make;

The calm she breeds let the sword's lightning break!

It is the tyrants who have beaten out

Ploughshares and pruning-hooks to spears and swords,

And shall I pause and moralize and doubt?

Whose veins run water let him mete his words!

Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain!

And rather than humanity remain

A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine,

Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain. 80

That surely is of God, and all divine!