O my Sibyl, my deceiver!
For thou makest each mystery clearer,
And the unattained seems nearer,
When thou fillest my heart with fever! 60
Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!
Though the fields around us wither,
There are ampler realms and spaces,
Where no foot has left its traces:
Let us turn and wander thither! 65
The Ladder of St. Augustine
SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things, each day’s events, 5
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.
The low desire, the base design,
That makes another’s virtues less; 10
The revel of the ruddy wine,
And all occasions of excess;
The longing for ignoble things;
The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings 15
Irreverence for the dreams of youth;
All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
The action of the nobler will; — 20
All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.
We have not wings, we cannot soar; 25
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.
The mighty pyramids of stone
That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, 30
When nearer seen, and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear 35
As we to higher levels rise.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night. 40
Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern — unseen before —
A path to higher destinies,
Nor deem the irrevocable Past 45
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
The Warden of the Cinque Ports
Written in October, 1852. The Warden was the Duke of Wellington, who died September 13.
A MIST was driving down the British Channel,
The day was just begun,
And through the window-panes, on floor and panel,
Streamed the red autumn sun.
It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, 5
And the white sails of ships;
And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon
Hailed it with feverish lips.
Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, and Dover
Were all alert that day, 10
To see the French war-steamers speeding over,
When the fog cleared away.
Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions,
Their cannon, through the night,
Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance, 15
The sea-coast opposite.
And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations
On every citadel;
Each answering each, with morning salutations,
That all was well. 20
And down the coast, all taking up the burden,
Replied the distant forts,
As if to summon from his sleep the Warden
And Lord of the Cinque Ports.
Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure, 25
No drum-beat from the wall,
No morning gun from the black fort’s embrasure,
Awaken with its call!
No more, surveying with an eye impartial
The long line of the coast, 30
Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal
Be seen upon his post!
For in the night, unseen, a single warrior,
In sombre harness mailed,
Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, 35
The rampart wall had scaled.
He passed into the chamber of the sleeper,
The dark and silent room,
And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper,
The silence and the gloom. 40
He did not pause to parley or dissemble,
But smote the Warden hoar;
Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble
And groan from shore to shore.
Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, 45
The sun rose bright o’erhead;
Nothing in Nature’s aspect intimated
That a great man was dead.
Haunted Houses
ALL houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the doorway, on the stair, 5
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall 10
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me 15
All that has been is visible and clear.
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates. 20
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Our little lives are kept in equipoise 25
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.
These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high, 30
Come from the influence of an unseen star,
An undiscovered planet in our sky.
And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd 35
Into the realm of mystery and night, —
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss. 40
In the Churchyard at Cambridge
IN the village churchyard she lies,
Dust is in her beautiful eyes,
No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs;
At her feet and at her head
Lies a slave to attend the dead, 5
But their dust is white as hers.
Was she, a lady of high degree,
So much in love with the vanity
And foolish pomp of thi
s world of ours?
Or was it Christian charity, 10
And lowliness and humility,
The richest and rarest of all dowers?
Who shall tell us? No one speaks;
No color shoots into those cheeks,
Either of anger or of pride, 15
At the rude question we have asked;
Nor will the mystery be unmasked
By those who are sleeping at her side.
Hereafter? — And do you think to look
On the terrible pages of that Book 20
To find her failings, faults, and errors?
Ah, you will then have other cares,
In your own shortcomings and despairs,
In your own secret sins and terrors!
The Emperor’s Bird’s-Nest
ONCE the Emperor Charles of Spain,
With his swarthy, grave commanders,
I forget in what campaign,
Long besieged, in mud and rain,
Some old frontier town of Flanders. 5
Up and down the dreary camp,
In great boots of Spanish leather,
Striding with a measured tramp,
These Hidalgos, dull and damp,
Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather. 10
Thus as to and fro they went
Over upland and through hollow,
Giving their impatience vent,
Perched upon the Emperor’s tent,
In her nest, they spied a swallow. 15
Yes, it was a swallow’s nest,
Built of clay and hair of horses,
Mane, or tail, or dragoon’s crest,
Found on hedge-rows east and west,
After skirmish of the forces. 20
Then an old Hidalgo said,
As he twirled his gray mustachio,
“Sure this swallow overhead
Thinks the Emperor’s tent a shed,
And the Emperor but a Macho!” 25
Hearing his imperial name
Coupled with those words of malice,
Half in anger, half in shame,
Forth the great campaigner came
Slowly from his canvas palace. 30
“Let no hand the bird molest,”
Said he solemnly, “nor hurt her!”
Adding then, by way of jest,
“Golondrina is my guest,
‘T is the wife of some deserter!” 35
Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft,
Through the camp was spread the rumor,
And the soldiers, as they quaffed
Flemish beer at dinner, laughed
At the Emperor’s pleasant humor. 40
So unharmed and unafraid
Sat the swallow still and brooded,
Till the constant cannonade
Through the walls a breach had made,
And the siege was thus concluded. 45
Then the army, elsewhere bent,
Struck its tents as if disbanding,
Only not the Emperor’s tent,
For he ordered, ere he went,
Very curtly, “Leave it standing!” 50
So it stood there all alone,
Loosely flapping, torn and tattered,
Till the brood was fledged and flown,
Singing o’er those walls of stone
Which the cannon-shot had shattered. 55
The Two Angels
In a letter to a correspondent written April 25, 1855, Mr. Longfellow says: “I have only time this morning to enclose you a poem … written on the birth of my younger daughter, and the death of the young and beautiful wife of my neighbor and friend, the poet Lowell. It will serve as an answer to one of your questions about life and its many mysteries. To these dark problems there is no other solution possible, except the one word Providence.”
TWO angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o’er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,
The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.
Their attitude and aspect were the same, 5
Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.
I saw them pause on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, 10
“Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!”
And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells 15
The waters sink before an earthquake’s shock.
I recognized the nameless agony,
The terror and the tremor and the pain,
That oft before had filled or haunted me,
And now returned with threefold strength again. 20
The door I opened to my heavenly guest,
And listened, for I thought I heard God’s voice;
And, knowing whatsoe’er he sent was best,
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.
Then with a smile, that filled the house with light, 25
“My errand is not Death, but Life,” he said;
And ere I answered, passing out of sight,
On his celestial embassy he sped.
‘T was at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath, 30
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.
Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room, 35
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God! If he but wave his hand,
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,
Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud. 40
Angels of Life and Death alike are his;
Without his leave they pass no threshold o’er;
Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this,
Against his messengers to shut the door?
Daylight and Moonlight
IN broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a school-boy’s paper kite.
In broad daylight, yesterday, 5
I read a Poet’s mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.
But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away, 10
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.
Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night 15
With revelations of her light.
And the Poet’s song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery. 20
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
HOW strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep 5
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind’s breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place, 10
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown, down
And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base.
The very names recorded he
re are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange 15
With Abraham and Jacob of old times.
“Blessed be God, for he created Death!”
The mourners said, “and Death is rest and peace;”
Then added, in the certainty of faith,
“And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease.” 20
Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,
No Psalms of David now the silence break,
No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue
In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.
Gone are the living, but the dead remain, 25
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,
Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind, 30
Drove o’er the sea — that desert desolate —
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?
They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure 35
The life of anguish and the death of fire.
All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,
The wasting famine of the heart they fed,
And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. 40
Anathema maranatha! was the cry
That rang from town to town, from street to street:
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 12