THE CHIEF AMERICAN POETS

tales;

Touches a cheek with colors of romance, And crowds a history into a glance;

1 Compare the essay on Plato: ' 'Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could prostrate himself on the earth and cover his eyes whilst he adored that which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or named... He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to demonstrate . .. that this Being exceeded the limits of intellect. No man ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable.'

2 Compare Bryant's 'Flood of Years.'

The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence.
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-
The punctual stars will vigil keep, —
Embalmed by purifying cold;

Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,
Prints his small impress on the snow,
Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
Head downward, clinging to the spray.

Here was this atom in full breath,
Hurling defiance at vast death;
This scrap of valor just for play
Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,
As if to shame my weak behavior;

I greeted loud my little savior,

You pet! what dost here? and what for?
In these woods, thy small Labrador,
At this pinch, wee San Salvador!
What fire burns in that little chest
So frolic, stout and self-possest?
Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine;
Ashes and jet all hues outshine.

The winds shall sing their dead-march old, 20 Why are not diamonds black and gray,

The snow is no ignoble shroud,

The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

Softly, but this way fate was pointing,
"T was coming fast to such anointing,
When piped a tiny voice hard by,
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
Chic-chic-a-dee-dee! saucy note
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said, 'Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places,
Where January brings few faces.'

This poet, though he live apart,
Moved by his hospitable heart,
Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,
To do the honors of his court,
As fits a feathered lord of land;

Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,

perched on the nearest bough, flew down into the snow, rested there two seconds, then up again just over my head, and busied himself on the dead bark. I whistled to him through my teeth, and (I think, in response) he began at once to whistle. I promised him crumbs, and must not go again to these woods without them. I suppose the best food to carry would be the meat of shagbarks or Castile nuts. Thoreau tells me that they are very sociable with wood-choppers, and will take crumbs from their hands. (Journal, March 3, 1862.)

Compare Holmes's characteristic comment on this poem, in his Pages from an Old Volume of Life: The moral of the poem is as heroic as the verse is exquisite ; but we must not forget the non-conducting quality of fur and feathers, and remember, if we are at all delicate, to go

Wrapped in our virtue, and a good surtout, by way of additional security.'

To ape thy dare-devil array ?
And I affirm, the spacious North
Exists to draw thy virtue forth.
I think no virtue goes with size;
The reason of all cowardice
Is, that men are overgrown,
And, to be valiant, must come down
To the titmouse dimension.'

"T is good will makes intelligence,
And I began to catch the sense
Of my bird's song: 'Live out of doors:
In the great woods, on prairie floors.

60.

I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea,

For men mis-hear thy call in Spring,
As 't would accost some frivolous wing,
Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be!
And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee!

I think old Cæsar must have heard
In northern Gaul my dauntless bird,
And, echoed in some frosty wold,
Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold.
And I will write our annals new,
And thank thee for a better clew,

I, who dreamed not when I came here
To find the antidote of fear,

Now hear thee say in Roman key,
Paan! Veni, vidi, vici.

1862.

BOSTON HYMN

100

1862.

Building for their sons the State, Which they shall rule with pride. They forbore to break the chain Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, Lured by Union' as the bribe. Destiny sat by, and said,

Pang for pang your seed shall pay, Hide in false peace your coward head, I bring round the harvest day.'

FREEDOM all winged expands,

Nor perches in a narrow place;
Her broad van seeks unplanted lands;
She loves a poor and virtuous race.
Clinging to a colder zone

Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake down,

The snowflake is her banner's star,
Her stripes the boreal streamers are.
Long she loved the Northman well;
Now the iron age is done,

She will not refuse to dwell
With the offspring of the Sun;
Foundling of the desert far,

Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,
He roves unhurt the burning ways
In climates of the summer star.
He has avenues to God

Hid from men of Northern brain,
Far beholding, without cloud,
What these with slowest steps attain.
If once the generous chief arrive
To lead him willing to be led,

For freedom he will strike and strive,
And drain his heart till he be dead.

And quit proud homes and youthful dames For famine, toil and fray?

Yet on the nimble air benign

Speed nimbler messages,

That waft the breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.1

OH, well for the fortunate soul
Which Music's wings infold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old!

Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtile thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought.

But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,

Feeling only the fiery thread
Leading over heroic ground,
Walled with mortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around, all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain
Him duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.

100

110

2 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, May 14, 1846: I, too, have a new plaything, the best I ever had, a woodlot. Last fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, on the border of a little lake half a mile wide and more, called Walden Pond;-a place to which my feet have for years been accustomed to bring me once or twice a week at all seasons.' See the whole letter, in the Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 123-125.

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