Merciful God! have I fallen so low?
And yet I was once like this beautiful snow!
Once I was fair as the beautiful snow,
With an eye like its crystals, a heart like its glow;
Once I was loved for my innocent grace—
Flattered and sought for the charm of my face.
Father,
Mother,
Sisters all,
God, and myself, I have lost by my fall.
The veriest wretch that goes shivering by
Will take a wide sweep, lest I wander too nigh;
For of all that is on or about me, I know
There is nothing that’s pure but the beautiful snow.
How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it would be, when the night comes again,
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!
Fainting,
Freezing,
Dying alone
Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan
To be heard in the crash of the crazy town,
Gone mad in its joy at the snow’s coming down
To lie and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow.
A Response to “Beautiful Snow”
(by Sallie J. Hancock)
Cast by the bright wings of a seraph—the snow,
From the uppermost heights to the earth below;
Gently enwrapping a star-begemmed spread
O’er homes of the living and graves of the dead.
Radiantly white as the Genii of story!
Pure as the saints in their robings of glory!
Whose soft tears of sympathy froze in their fall,
For the sin and the curse that are over us all;
Fleecy and light from the olive-hued skies,
As the trailing insignia of paradise;
The one fair perishing thing that is given
To worlds aglow with the splendors of Heaven!
Proud spirit, who told of the height which you fell
Adown “like the snow flakes from Heaven to hell?”
God made you as fair as the beautiful snow!
He loves you, poor sinner, though you may not know
How deep in that Infinite heart sank your cry
For “shelter” and “rest” of the saint passing by,
Who spurned you, and left you to die in the street,
With a bed and a shroud of the snow and the sleet.
The world has cursed you, yet God has not said
A soul shall be bartered for gold or for bread.
He knows all your erring and horrible woe,
The want and the crime that have maddened you so:
All the dearer to him for the strife, and for stain,
And purer to-day for repentance and pain!
Made white by His blood, as the beautiful snow
“That falls on a sinner with nowhere to go;”
And sweeter the pardon hard won by the cries
That from Magdalen lips went up to the skies.
Oh! beautiful snow, from the filth of the earth,
Swift rises again in its cherubic mirth
In crystalline dew-drops—all glistening bright
As clear shining stars in a heaven of night.
If contrite to the throne of God’s mercy you go,
He will make you as pure as the “beautiful snow!”
EDWARD JEWITT WHEELER
(1859-1922)
BORN IN CLEVELAND, Wheeler settled in New York City where he edited several periodicals including the Literary Digest, and served a term as president of the Poetry Society of America. He authored several nonfiction books, and at least one volume of poetry, Stories in Rhyme for Holiday Time (1894). The two poems chosen here are the only two I found anthologized, one light-hearted, the other a serious, well-crafted sonnet.
“Alleys” are superior marbles, and “commons” are common marbles. I had no notion of what “phen-dubs” meant until William Harmon, a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, had the impulse to check a variant spelling, “fen-dubs,” in the Dictionary of American Regional English. It, too, is a term used in marble games. If a player knocks two marbles out of the ring in one shot, he can say “dubs” and keep both marbles. But if his opponent shouts “fen-dubs” it prohibits the shooter from altering the rules, and he must put one marble back. “Fen” is a corruption of fend, meaning to forbid, and “dubs” refers to doubling.
“Onery twoery ickery ann” was an old counting-out rhyme like “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo” and “Ibbity, bibbity, sibbity sab.” The exact words varied widely. For the full jingle, see Rainbow in the Sky (1935), an anthology edited by Louis Untermeyer.
The Boy to the Schoolmaster
You’ve quizzed me often and puzzled me long,
You’ve asked me to cipher and spell,
You’ve called me a dunce if I answered wrong,
Or a dolt if I failed to tell
Just when to say lie and when to say lay,
Or what nine sevens may make,
Or the longitude of Kamschatka Bay,
Or the I-forget-what’s-its-name Lake,
So I think its about my turn, I do,
To ask a question or so of you.
The schoolmaster grim, he opened his eyes,
But said not a word for sheer surprise.
Can you tell what “phen-dubs” means? I can.
Can you say all off by heart
The “onery twoery ickery ann,”
Or tell “alleys” and “commons” apart?
Can you fling a top, I would like to know,
Till it hums like a bumble-bee?
Can you make a kite yourself that will go
’Most as high as the eye can see,
Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing,
And the little birds come and light on its string?
The schoolmaster looked oh! very demure,
But his mouth was twitching, I’m almost sure.
Can you tell where the nest of the oriole swings,
Or the color its eggs may be?
Do you know the time when the squirrel brings
Its young from their nest in the tree?
Can you tell when the chestnuts are ready to drop
Or where the best hazel-nuts grow?
Can you climb a high tree to the very tip-top,
Then gaze without trembling below?
Can you swim and dive, can you jump and run,
Or do anything else we boys call fun?
The master’s voice trembled as he replied:
“You are right, my lad, I’m the dunce,” he sighed.
Night’s Mardi Gras
Night is the true democracy. When day
Like some great monarch with his train has passed,
In regal pomp and splendor to the last,
The stars troop forth along the Milky Way,
A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray,
On heaven’s broad boulevard in pageants vast.
And things of earth, the hunted and outcast,
Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea,
Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind
Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start,
And specters of dead joy, that shun the light,
And impotent regrets and terrors blind,
Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part
In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
(1807—1892)
WHITTIER’S TWO best known poems, “The Barefoot Boy” and “Maud Muller,” with a brief sketch of his life, are in this book’s “prequel,” Best Remembered Poems. Here I reprint in full (most anthologies contain only a portion) “The Eternal Goodness,” his most admired religious poem. Nothing he wrote so eloquent
ly expressed his simple Quaker faith, and his abhorrence of Calvinism’s belief in eternal punishment for the unsaved—a doctrine that made God eternally evil. It was first printed in The Independent (March 16, 1865) and later in The Tent on the Beach and Other Poems (1867).
“Barbara Frietchie” is seldom in today’s schoolbooks, partly because of its historical inaccuracy. The first person to display the Union flag in 1862, when Stonewall Jackson marched his men through Frederick, Maryland, was a young woman. Not until northern troops entered the town a week later did Barbara do the same. It doesn’t matter, because Whittier’s poem can still be enjoyed, and “ ’Shoot, if you must, this old grey head’ ” is a line not easily forgotten.
“Barbara Frietchie” first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (October 1863), without a byline, and later in Whittier’s In War Time and Other Poems (1864). He based the story on a letter from Mrs. Southworth, a writer of some sixty sensational romantic novels, all now forgotten but then avidly devoured by women. She had the unusual maiden name of Emma Dorothy Eliza Novitte, the initials of which spell EDEN. Whittier thanked her with a handwritten copy of his poem and a note saying, “If it is good for anything, thee deserves all the credit.”
The Eternal Goodness
O Friends! with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise His justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.
Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord’s beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas! I know:
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.
I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.
Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed trust my spirit clings;
I know that God is good!
Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,
But nothing can be good in Him
Which evil is in me.
The wrong that pains my soul below
I dare not throne above;
I know not of His hate,—I know
His goodness and His love.
I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.
I long for household voices gone,
For vanished smiles I long,
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And He can do no wrong.
I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
And if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed He will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove;
I can but give the gifts He gave,
And plead His love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar;
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
O brothers! if my faith is vain,
If hopes like these betray,
Pray for me that my feet may gain
The sure and safer way.
And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,
Forgive me if too close I lean
My human heart on Thee!
Barbara Frietchie
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round and about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde;
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall,
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
“Halt! ”—the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
“Fire!”—out blazed the rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
“Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,
But spare your country’s flag!” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word:
“Who touches a hair of yon grey head
Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.
REVEREND CHARLES WOLFE
(1791—1823)
WOLFE’S ELEGY ON the death of Sir John Moore, one of England’s best-loved poems, became almost as much admired in the United States. Moore was a renowned British general who died in 1809 in the Peninsular War while leading his troops in Corunna, Spain, to a victorious battle against Napoleon’s army
. The general was carried off the field, mortally wounded, and buried before dawn.
Charles Wolfe, a Church of England curate born in Dublin, was said to have based his elegy on an account of Moore’s death by Robert Southey. The poem appeared in the Newry Telegraph in 1817. A book of Wolfe’s poems was posthumously published in 1903, but only this one has survived in hundreds of anthologies.
A few scribblers falsely claimed authorship of the elegy, and there have been many parodies. At least two of the best took “burial” as a euphemism for “married.” PhoebeCary—she and her sister Alice were both popular nineteenth-century versifiers—wrote “The Marriage of Sir John Smith,” which begins:
Not a sigh was heard, nor a funeral tone,
As the man to his bridal we hurried;
Not a woman discharged her farewell groan,
Famous Poems from Bygone Days Page 20