At every gate the accursed Mordecai
Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.
Pride and humiliation hand in hand 45
Walked with them through the world where’er they went;
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.
For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime, 50
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, 55
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again. 60
Oliver Basselin
IN the Valley of the Vire
Still is seen an ancient mill,
With its gables quaint and queer,
And beneath the window-sill,
On the stone, 5
These words alone:
“Oliver Basselin lived here.”
Far above it, on the steep,
Ruined stands the old Château;
Nothing but the donjon-keep 10
Left for shelter or for show.
Its vacant eyes
Stare at the skies,
Stare at the valley green and deep.
Once a convent, old and brown, 15
Looked, but ah! it looks no more,
From the neighboring hillside down
On the rushing and the roar
Of the stream
Whose sunny gleam 20
Cheers the little Norman town.
In that darksome mill of stone,
To the water’s dash and din,
Careless, humble, and unknown,
Sang the poet Basselin 25
Songs that fill
That ancient mill
With a splendor of its own.
Never feeling of unrest
Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed; 30
Only made to be his nest,
All the lovely valley seemed;
No desire
Of soaring higher
Stirred or fluttered in his breast. 35
True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which, as winds do in the pine,
Find an answer in each heart;
But the mirth 40
Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.
From the alehouse and the inn,
Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud, convivial din, 45
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays
That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.
In the castle, cased in steel, 50
Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang, 55
Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.
In the convent, clad in gray,
Sat the monks in lonely cells,
Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,
And the poet heard their bells; 60
But his rhymes
Found other chimes,
Nearer to the earth than they.
Gone are all the barons bold,
Gone are all the knights and squires, 65
Gone the abbot stern and cold,
And the brotherhood of friars;
Not a name
Remains to fame,
From those mouldering days of old! 70
But the poet’s memory here
Of the landscape makes a part;
Like the river, swift and clear,
Flows his song through many a heart;
Haunting still 75
That ancient mill
In the Valley of the Vire.
Victor Galbraith
UNDER the walls of Monterey
At daybreak the bugles began to play,
Victor Galbraith!
In the mist of the morning damp and gray,
These were the words they seemed to say: 5
“Come forth to thy death,
Victor Galbraith!”
Forth he came, with a martial tread;
Firm was his step, erect his head;
Victor Galbraith, 10
He who so well the bugle played,
Could not mistake the words it said:
“Come forth to thy death,
Victor Galbraith!”
He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky, 15
He looked at the files of musketry,
Victor Galbraith!
And he said, with a steady voice and eye,
“Take good aim; I am ready to die!”
Thus challenges death 20
Victor Galbraith.
Twelve fiery tongues flashed straight and red,
Six leaden balls on their errand sped;
Victor Galbraith
Falls to the ground, but he is not dead: 25
His name was not stamped on those balls of lead,
And they only scath
Victor Galbraith.
Three balls are in his breast and brain,
But he rises out of the dust again, 30
Victor Galbraith!
The water he drinks has a bloody stain;
“Oh kill me, and put me out of my pain!”
In his agony prayeth
Victor Galbraith. 35
Forth dart once more those tongues of flame,
And the bugler has died a death of shame,
Victor Galbraith!
His soul has gone back to whence it came,
And no one answers to the name, 40
When the Sergeant saith,
“Victor Galbraith!”
Under the walls of Monterey
By night a bugle is heard to play,
Victor Galbraith! 45
Through the mist of the valley damp and gray
The sentinels hear the sound, and say,
“That is the wraith
Of Victor Galbraith!”
My Lost Youth
During one of his visits to Portland in 1846, Mr. Longfellow relates how he took a long walk round Munjoy’s hill and down to the old Fort Lawrence. “I lay down,” he says, “in one of the embrasures and listened to the lashing, lulling sound of the sea just at my feet. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the harbor was full of white sails, coming and departing. Meditated a poem on the Old Fort.” It does not appear that any poem was then written, but the theme remained, and in 1855, when in Cambridge, he notes in his diary, March 29: “A day of pain; cowering over the fire. At night, as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my mind, — a memory of Portland, — my native town, the city by the sea.
Siede la terra dove nato fui
Sulla marina.
“March 30. Wrote the poem; and am rather pleased with it, and with the bringing in of the two lines of the old Lapland song,
A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
OFTEN I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me. 5
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 10
And catch, in sudden gleams,
> The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.
And the burden of that old song, 15
It murmurs and whispers still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free; 20
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still: 25
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, 30
The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.
And the music of that old song
Throbs in my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will, 35
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o’er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o’erlooking the tranquil bay 40
Where they in battle died.
And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” 45
I can see the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering’s Woods;
And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods. 50
And the verse of that sweet old song,
It flutters and murmurs still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
I remember the gleams and glooms that dart 55
Across the school-boy’s brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song 60
Sings on, and is never still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
There are things of which I may not speak;
There are dreams that cannot die; 65
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,
And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill: 70
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
Strange to me now are the forms I meet
When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet, 75
And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street,
As they balance up and down,
Are singing the beautiful song,
Are sighing and whispering still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will, 80
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were, 85
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” 90
The Ropewalk
IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin 5
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.
At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel, 10
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.
As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,
Gleam the long threads in the sun; 15
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.
Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing, 20
First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.
Then a booth of mountebanks, 25
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress,
With a faded loveliness,
And a weary look of care. 30
Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face, 35
As at some magician’s spell.
Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,
While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet, 40
And again, in swift retreat,
Nearly lifts him from the ground.
Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth; 45
Ah! it is the gallows-tree!
Breath of Christian charity,
Blow, and sweep it from the earth!
Then a school-boy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light, 50
And an eager, upward look;
Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.
Ships rejoicing in the breeze, 55
Wrecks that float o’er unknown seas,
Anchors dragged through faithless sand;
Sea-fog drifting overhead,
And, with lessening line and lead,
Sailors feeling for the land. 60
All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,
In that building long and low;
While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy, dreamy sound, 65
And the spinners backward go.
The Golden Mile-Stone
“December 20, 1854. The weather is ever so cold. The landscape looks dreary; but the sunset and twilight are resplendent. Sketch out a poem, The Golden Mile-Stone.”
LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the winter sunset.
From the hundred chimneys of the village, 5
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns
Tower aloft into the air of amber.
At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer, 10
Social watch-fires
Answering one another through the darkness.
On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree
For its freedom 15
Groans and sighs the air impris
oned in them.
By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,
Asking sadly
Of the Past what it can ne’er restore them. 20
By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,
Asking blindly
Of the Future what it cannot give them.
By the fireside tragedies are acted 25
In whose scenes appear two actors only,
Wife and husband,
And above them God the sole spectator.
By the fireside there are peace and comfort,
Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces, 30
Waiting, watching
For a well-known footstep in the passage.
Each man’s chimney is his Golden Mile-Stone;
Is the central point, from which he measures
Every distance 35
Through the gateways of the world around him.
In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,
As he heard them
When he sat with those who were, but are not. 40
Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,
Nor the march of the encroaching city,
Drives an exile
From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.
We may build more splendid habitations, 45
Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,
But we cannot
Buy with gold the old associations!
Catawba Wine
Written on the receipt of a gift of Catawba wine from the vineyards of Nicholas Longworth on the Ohio River.
THIS song of mine
Is a Song of the Vine,
To be sung by the glowing embers
Of wayside inns,
When the rain begins 5
To darken the drear Novembers.
It is not a song
Of the Scuppernong,
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 13