So, when this fluid age we live in Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle The savants of the coming time;
And, following out their dim suggestions, Some idly-curious hand may draw My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier Drew fish and bird from fin and claw.
And maidens in the far-off twilights, Singing my words to breeze and stream, Shall wonder if the old-time Mary Were real, or the rhymer's dream!
1st 3d mo., 1857.
THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.
Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, Our hills are maple-crowned; But not from them our fathers chose The village burying-ground.
The dreariest spot in all the land To Death they set apart; With scanty grace from Nature's hand, And none from that of Art.
A winding wall of mossy stone, Frost-flung and broken, lines A lonesome acre thinly grown With grass and wandering vines.
Without the wall a birch-tree shows Its drooped and tasselled head; Within, a stag-horned sumach grows, Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.
There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain Like white ghosts come and go, The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, The cow-bell tinkles slow.
Low moans the river from its bed, The distant pines reply; Like mourners shrinking from the dead, They stand apart and sigh.
Unshaded smites the summer sun, Unchecked the winter blast; The school-girl learns the place to shun, With glances backward cast.
For thus our fathers testified, That he might read who ran, The emptiness of human pride, The nothingness of man.
They dared not plant the grave with flowers, Nor dress the funeral sod, Where, with a love as deep as ours, They left their dead with God.
The hard and thorny path they kept From beauty turned aside; Nor missed they over those who slept The grace to life denied.
Yet still the wilding flowers would blow, The golden leaves would fall, The seasons come, the seasons go, And God be good to all.
Above the graves the' blackberry hung In bloom and green its wreath, And harebells swung as if they rung The chimes of peace beneath.
The beauty Nature loves to share, The gifts she hath for all, The common light, the common air, O'ercrept the graveyard's wall.
It knew the glow of eventide, The sunrise and the noon, And glorified and sanctified It slept beneath the moon.
With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod, Around the seasons ran, And evermore the love of God Rebuked the fear of man.
We dwell with fears on either hand, Within a daily strife, And spectral problems waiting stand Before the gates of life.
The doubts we vainly seek to solve, The truths we know, are one; The known and nameless stars revolve Around the Central Sun.
And if we reap as we have sown, And take the dole we deal, The law of pain is love alone, The wounding is to heal.
Unharmed from change to change we glide, We fall as in our dreams; The far-off terror at our side A smiling angel seems.
Secure on God's all-tender heart Alike rest great and small; Why fear to lose our little part, When He is pledged for all?
O fearful heart and troubled brain Take hope and strength from this,-- That Nature never hints in vain, Nor prophesies amiss.
Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given Alike to playground and the grave; And over both is Heaven.
1858
THE PALM-TREE.
Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm?
Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm?
A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath, And a rudder of palm it steereth with.
Branches of palm are its spars and rails, Fibres of palm are its woven sails, And the rope is of palm that idly trails!
What does the good ship bear so well?
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, And the milky sap of its inner cell.
What are its jars, so smooth and fine, But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine, And the cabbage that ripens under the Line?
Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm?
The master, whose cunning and skill could charm Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.
In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft, From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed, And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft!
His dress is woven of palmy strands, And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands, Traced with the Prophet's wise commands!
The turban folded about his head Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid, And the fan that cools him of palm was made.
Of threads of palm was the carpet spun Whereon he kneels when the day is done, And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one!
To him the palm is a gift divine, Wherein all uses of man combine,-- House, and raiment, and food, and wine!
And, in the hour of his great release, His need of the palm shall only cease With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.
"Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm, On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm; "Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!"
1858.
THE RIVER PATH.