Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 70

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Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not,

In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,

Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse.—

Poor windfalls of unripe experience,

Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands

Not patient to await more full-blown flowers—

At least it hath seen more of life and men,

And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad;

Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust

In the benignness of that Providence 10

Which shapes from out our elements awry

The grace and order that we wonder at,

The mystic harmony of right and wrong,

Both working out his wisdom and our good:

A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee,

Who hast that gift of patient tenderness,

The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart.

They tell us that our land was made for song,

With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks,

Its sealike lakes and mighty cataracts, 20

Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,

And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct.

But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;

Her womb and cradle are the human heart,

And she can find a nobler theme for song

In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight

Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore

Between the frozen deserts of the poles.

All nations have their message from on high,

Each the messiah of some central thought, 30

For the fulfilment and delight of Man:

One has to teach that labor is divine;

Another Freedom; and another Mind;

And all, that God is open-eyed and just,

The happy centre and calm heart of all.

Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams,

Needful to teach our poets how to sing?

O maiden rare, far other thoughts were ours,

When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge,

And watched the waves leap roaring on the rocks, 40

Than young Leander and his Hero had,

Gazing from Sestos to the other shore.

The moon looks down and ocean worships her,

Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go

Even as they did in Homer's elder time,

But we behold them not with Grecian eyes:

Then they were types of beauty and of strength,

But now of freedom, unconflned and pure,

Subject alone to Order's higher law.

What cares the Russian serf or Southern slave 50

Though we should speak as man spake never yet

Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence,

Or green Niagara's never-ending roar?

Our country hath a gospel of her own

To preach and practise before all the world—

The freedom and divinity of man,

The glorious claims of human brotherhood—

Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should,

Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away—

And the soul's fealty to none but God. 60

These are realities, which make the shows

Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand,

Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible.

These are the mountain-summits for our bards,

Which stretch far upward into heaven itself,

And give such widespread and exulting view

Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny,

That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles.

Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star,

Silvers the mirk face of slow-yielding Night, 70

The herald of a fuller truth than yet

Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of Man

Since the earth glittered in her stainless prime—

Of a more glorious sunrise than of old

Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge,

Yea, draws them still, though now he sit waist-deep

In the ingulfing flood of whirling sand,

And look across the wastes of endless gray,

Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Thebes

Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven: 80

Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons,

And we till noonday bar the splendor out,

Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts,

Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice,

And be content, though clad with angel-wings,

Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch,

In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts?

Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing,

And let our gushing songs befit the dawn

And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew 90

Brimming the chalice of each full-blown hope,

Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day!

Never had poets such high call before,

Never can poets hope for higher one,

And, if they be but faithful to their trust,

Earth will remember them with love and joy,

And oh, far better, God will not forget.

For he who settles Freedom's principles

Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny;

Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, 100

And his mere word makes despots tremble more

Than ever Brutus with his dagger could.

Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods,

Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce,

Repay the finding of this Western World,

Or needed half the globe to give them birth:

Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for this

Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul

To jostle with the daws that perch in courts;

Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea, 110

Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits,

Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart

Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt,

The hermit, of that loneliest solitude,

The silent desert of a great New Thought;

Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb,

Yet would this cataract of boiling life

Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps,

And utter thunder till the world shall cease—

A thunder worthy of the poet's song, 120

And which alone can fill it with true life.

The high evangel to our country granted

Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire,

Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay!

'Tis the soul only that is national,

And he who pays true loyalty to that

Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism.

Beloved! if I wander far and oft

From that which I believe, and feel, and know,

Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing heart, 130

But with a strengthened hope of better things;

Knowing that I, though often blind and false

To those I love, and oh, more false than all

Unto myself, have been most true to thee,

And that whoso in one thing hath been true

Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope

May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love

Meet, day by day, with less unworthy thanks,

Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand,

Or, parted in the body, yet are one 140

In spirit and the love of holy things.