The Penguin Book of American Verse

by Geoffrey Moore

Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,

  And motionless forever. – Motionless? –

  No – they are all unchained again. The clouds

  Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath.

  The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;

  Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase

  The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!

  Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,

  And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,

  Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not – ye have played

  Among the palms of Mexico and vines

  Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks

  That from the fountains of Sonora glide

  Into the calm Pacific – have ye fanned

  A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?

  Man hath no power in all this glorious work:

  The hand that built the firmament hath heaved

  And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes

  With herbage, planted them with island groves,

  And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor

  For this magnificent temple of the sky –

  With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

  Rival the constellations! The great heavens

  Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love, –

  A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,

  Than that which bends above our eastern hills.

  As o’er the verdant waste I guide my steed,

  Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides

  The hollow beating of his footstep seems

  A sacrilegious sound. I think of those

  Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here –

  The dead of other days? – and did the dust

  Of these fair solitudes once stir with life

  And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds

  That overlook the rivers, or that rise

  In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,

  Answer. A race, that long has passed away,

  Built them; – a disciplined and populous race

  Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek

  Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

  Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock

  The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields

  Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,

  When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,

  And bowed his manèd shoulder to the yoke.

  All day this desert murmured with their toils,

  Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed

  In a forgotten language, and old tunes,

  From instruments of unremembered form,

  Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came –

  The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,

  And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.

  The solitude of centuries untold

  Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf

  Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den

  Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground

  Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone;

  All – save the piles of earth that hold their bones,

  The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,

  The barriers which they builded from the soil

  To keep the foe at bay – till o’er the walls

  The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

  The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped

  With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood

  Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,

  And sat unscared and silent at their feast.

  Haply some solitary fugitive,

  Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense

  Of desolation and of fear became

  Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.

  Man’s better nature triumphed then. Kind words

  Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors

  Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose

  A bride among their maidens, and at length

  Seemed to forget – yet ne’er forgot – the wife

  Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,

  Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

  Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise

  Races of living things, glorious in strength,

  And perish, as the quickening breath of God

  Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,

  Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,

  And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought

  A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds

  No longer by these streams, but far away,

  On waters whose blue surface ne’er gave back

  The white man’s face – among Missouri’s springs,

  And pools whose issues swell the Oregon –

  He rears his little Venice. In these plains

  The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues

  Beyond remotest smoke of hunter’s camp,

  Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake

  The earth with thundering steps – yet here I meet

  His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

  Still this great solitude is quick with life.

  Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers

  They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,

  And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,

  Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,

  Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer

  Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,

  A more adventurous colonist than man,

  With whom he came across the eastern deep,

  Fills the savannas with his murmurings,

  And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,

  Within the hollow oak. I listen long

  To his domestic hum, and think I hear

  The sound of that advancing multitude

  Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground

  Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice

  Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn

  Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds

  Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain

  Over the dark brown furrows. All at once

  A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,

  And I am in the wilderness alone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–82

  The Rhodora:

  ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

  In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

  I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

  Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

  To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

  The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

  Made the black water with their beauty gay;

  Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

  And court the flower that cheapens his array.

  Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

  This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

  Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing.

  Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

  Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

  I never thought to ask, I never knew:

  But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

  The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

  Each and All

  Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown

  Of thee from the hill-top looking down;

  The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

  Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;

  The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,

  Deems not that great Napoleon

  Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

  Whilst his files
sweep round yon Alpine height;

  Nor knowest thou what argument

  Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.

  All are needed by each one;

  Nothing is fair or good alone.

  I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,

  Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

  I brought him home, in his nest, at even;

  He sings the song, but it cheers not now,

  For I did not bring home the river and sky; –

  He sang to my ear, – they sang to my eye.

  The delicate shells lay on the shore;

  The bubbles of the latest wave

  Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,

  And the bellowing of the savage sea

  Greeted their safe escape to me.

  I wiped away the weeds and foam,

  I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

  But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

  Had left their beauty on the shore

  With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

  The lover watched his graceful maid,

  As ’mid the virgin train she strayed,

  Nor knew her beauty’s best attire

  Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

  At last she came to his hermitage,

  Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; –

  The gay enchantment was undone,

  A gentle wife, but fairy none.

  Then I said, ‘I covet truth;

  Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;

  I leave it behind with the games of youth:’ –

  As I spoke, beneath my feet

  The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

  Running over the club-moss burrs;

  I inhaled the violet’s breath;

  Around me stood the oaks and firs;

  Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;

  Over me soared the eternal sky,

  Full of light and of deity;

  Again I saw, again I heard,

  The rolling river, the morning bird; –

  Beauty through my senses stole;

  I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

  The Problem

  I like a church; I like a cowl;

  I love a prophet of the soul;

  And on my heart monastic aisles

  Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;

  Yet not for all his faith can see

  Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

  Why should the vest on him allure,

  Which I could not on me endure?

  Not from a vain or shallow thought

  His awful Jove young Phidias brought;

  Never from lips of cunning fell

  The thrilling Delphic oracle;

  Out from the heart of nature rolled

  The burdens of the Bible old;

  The litanies of nations came,

  Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,

  Up from the burning core below, –

  The canticles of love and woe:

  The hand that rounded Peter’s dome

  And groined the aisles of Christian Rome

  Wrought in a sad sincerity;

  Himself from God he could not free;

  He builded better than he knew; –

  The conscious stone to beauty grew.

  Know’st thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest

  Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

  Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,

  Painting with morn each annual cell?

  Or how the sacred pine-tree adds

  To her old leaves new myriads?

  Such and so grew these holy piles,

  Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.

  Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,

  As the best gem upon her zone,

  And Morning opes with haste her lids

  To gaze upon the Pyramids;

  O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky,

  As on its friends, with kindred eye;

  For out of Thought’s interior sphere

  These wonders rose to upper air;

  And Nature gladly gave them place,

  Adopted them into her race,

  And granted them an equal date

  With Andes and with Ararat.

  These temples grew as grows the grass;

  Art might obey, but not surpass.

  The passive Master lent his hand

  To the vast soul that o’er him planned;

  And the same power that reared the shrine

  Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

  Ever the fiery Pentecost

  Girds with one flame the countless host,

  Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

  And through the priest the mind inspires.

  The word unto the prophet spoken

  Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

  The word by seers or sibyls told,

  In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,

  Still floats upon the morning wind,

  Still whispers to the willing mind.

  One accent of the Holy Ghost

  The heedless world hath never lost.

  I know what say the fathers wise, –

  The Book itself before me lies,

  Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,

  And he who blent both in his line,

  The younger Golden Lips or mines,

  Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.

  His words are music in my ear,

  I see his cowled portrait dear;

  And yet, for all his faith could see,

  I would not the good bishop be.

  The Snow-Storm

  Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

  Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

  Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

  Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

  And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

  The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

  Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

  Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

  In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

  Come see the north wind’s masonry.

  Out of an unseen quarry evermore

  Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

  Curves his white bastions with projected roof

  Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

  Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

  So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

  For number or proportion. Mockingly,

  On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

  A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

  Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

  Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate

  A tapering turret overtops the work.

  And when his hours are numbered, and the world

  Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

  Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

  To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

  Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

  The frolic architecture of the snow.

  Blight

  Give me truths;

  For I am weary of the surfaces,

  And die of inanition. If I knew

  Only the herbs and simples of the wood,

  Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,

  Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,

  Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew,

  And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods

  Draw untold juices from the common earth,

  Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell

  Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply

  By sweet affinities to human flesh,

  Driving the foe and stablishing the friend, –

  O, that were much, and I could be a part

&n
bsp; Of the round day, related to the sun

  And planted world, and full executor

  Of their imperfect functions.

  But these young scholars, who invade our hills,

  Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,

  And travelling often in the cut he makes,

  Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,

  And all their botany is Latin names.

  The old men studied magic in the flowers,

  And human fortunes in astronomy,

  And an omnipotence in chemistry,

  Preferring things to names, for these were men,

  Were unitarians of the united world,

  And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,

  They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes

  Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,

  And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,

  And strangers to the plant and to the mine.

  The injured elements say, ‘Not in us;’

  And night and day, ocean and continent,

  Fire, plant and mineral say, ‘Not in us;’

  And haughtily return us stare for stare.

  For we invade them impiously for gain;

  We devastate them unreligiously,

  And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.

  Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us

  Only what to our griping toil is due;

  But the sweet affluence of love and song,

  The rich results of the divine consents

  Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,

  The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;

  And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves

  And pirates of the universe, shut out

  Daily to a more thin and outward rind,

  Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,

  The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,

  Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,

  And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;

  And life, shorn of its venerable length,

  Even at its greatest space is a defeat,

  And dies in anger that it was a dupe;

  And, in its highest noon and wantonness,

  Is early frugal, like a beggar’s child;

  Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims

  And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,

  Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,

  Chilled with a miserly comparison

  Of the toy’s purchase with the length of life.

  Hamatreya

  Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,

  Possessed the land which rendered to their toil

  Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.