The Giant Book of Poetry (2006)
Page 13
the belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
as it rose above the graves on the hill,
lonely and spectral and somber and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
a glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
but lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
a second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
a shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
and beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
that was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
the fate of a nation was riding that night;
and the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
and beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
and under the alders, that skirt its edge,
now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
when he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
and the barking of the farmer’s dog,
and felt the damp of the river fog,
that rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
when he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
swim in the moonlight as he passed,
and the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
gaze at him with a spectral glare,
as if they already stood aghast
at the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
when he came to the bridge in Concord town.
he heard the bleating of the flock,
and the twitter of birds among the trees,
and felt the breath of the morning breeze
blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
who at the bridge would be first to fall,
who that day would be lying dead,
pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
how the British Regulars fired and fled,—
how the farmers gave them ball for ball,
from behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
chasing the red-coats down the lane,
then crossing the fields to emerge again
under the trees at the turn of the road,
and only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
and so through the night went his cry of alarm
to every Middlesex village and farm,—
a cry of defiance and not of fear,
a voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
and a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
through all our history, to the last,
in the hour of darkness and peril and need,
the people will waken and listen to hear
the hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
and the midnight message of Paul Revere.
The Phantom Ship1
In Mather’s Magnalia Christi,
of the old colonial time,
may be found in prose the legend
that is here set down in rhyme.
A ship sailed from New Haven,
and the keen and frosty airs,
that filled her sails in parting
were heavy with good men’s prayers.
“O Lord! If it be thy pleasure”—
thus prayed the old divine—
“To bury our friends in the ocean,
take them, for they are thine!”
But Master Lamberton muttered,
and under his breath said he,
“This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!”
And the ships that came from England
when the winter months were gone,
brought no tidings of this vessel!
Nor of Master Lamberton.
This put the people to praying
that the Lord would let them hear
what in his greater wisdom
he had done to friends so dear.
And at last our prayers were answered:
it was in the month of June
an hour before sunset
of a windy afternoon.
When, steadily steering landward,
a ship was seen below,
and they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
who sailed so long ago.
On she came with a cloud of canvas,
right against the wind that blew,
until the eye could distinguish
the faces of the crew.
Then fell her straining topmasts,
hanging tangled in the shrouds,
and her sails were loosened and lifted,
and blown away like clouds.
And the masts, with all their rigging,
fell slowly, one by one,
and the hulk dilated and vanished,
as a sea-mist in the sun!
And the people who saw thus marvel
each said unto his friend,
that this was the mould of their vessel,
and thus her tragic end.
And the pastor of the village
gave thanks to God in Prayer,
that, to Quiet their troubled spirits,
he had sent this Ship of Air.
The Potter’s Wheel1
Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
without a pause, without a sound:
so spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
follows the motion of my hand;
far some must follow, and some command,
though all are made of clay!
Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
to something new, to something strange;
nothing that is can pause or stay;
the moon will wax, the moon will wane,
the mist and cloud will turn to rain,
the rain to mist and cloud again,
tomorrow be today.
Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;
what now is bud wilt soon be leaf,
what now is leaf will soon decay;
the wind blows east, the wind blows west;
the blue eggs in the robin’s nest
will soon have wings and beak and breast,
and flutter and fly away.
Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar
a touch can make, a touch can mar;
and shall it to the Potter say,
what makest thou? Thou hast no hand?
As men who think to understand
a world by their Creator planned,
who wiser is than they.
Turn, turn, my wheel! ’T is nature’s plan
the child should grow into the man,
the man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;
in youth the heart exults and sings,
the pulses leap, the feet have wings;
in age the cricket chirps, and brings
the harvest home of day.
Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
of every tongue, of every place,
caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
all that inhabit this great earth,
whatever be their rank or worth,
are kindred and allied by birth,
and made of the same clay.
Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun
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at daybreak must at dark be done,
tomorrow will be another day;
tomorrow the hot furnace flame
will search the heart and try the frame,
and stamp with honor or with shame
these vessels made of clay.
Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
the noon will be the afternoon,
too soon today be yesterday;
behind us in our path we cast
the broken potsherds of the past,
and all are ground to dust at last,
and trodden into clay!
The Rainy Day1
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
it rains, and the wind is never weary;
the vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
but at every gust the dead leaves fall,
and the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
it rains, and the wind is never weary;
my thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
but the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
and the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
thy fate is the common fate of all,
into each life some rain must fall,
some days must be dark and dreary.
The Three Silences of Molinos2
To John Greenleaf Whittier
Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
the second of desire, the third of thought;
this is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught
with dreams and visions, was the first to teach.
These Silences, commingling each with each,
made up the perfect Silence, that he sought
and prayed for, and wherein at times he caught
mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.
O thou, whose daily life anticipates
the life to come, and in whose thought and word
the spiritual world preponderates.
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
and speakest only when thy soul is stirred!
Travels by the Fireside1
The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
and yonder gilded vane,
immovable for three days past,
points to the misty main,
it drives me in upon myself
and to the fireside gleams,
to pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
and still more pleasant dreams,
I read whatever bards have sung
of lands beyond the sea,
and the bright days when I was young
come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
the Alpine torrent’s roar,
the mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
the sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent’s gleaming wall
rise from its groves of pine,
and towers of old cathedrals tall,
and castles by the Rhine.
I journey on by park and spire,
beneath centennial trees,
through fields with poppies all on fire,
and gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,
no more I feel fatigue,
while journeying with another’s feet
o’er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
and toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
reading these poets’ rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
beneath each changing zone,
and see, when looking with their eyes,
better than with mine own.
Twilight1
The twilight is sad and cloudy,
the wind blows wild and free,
and like the wings of sea-birds
flash the white caps of the sea.
But in the fisherman’s cottage
there shines a ruddier light,
and a little face at the window
peers out into the night.
Close, close it is pressed to the window,
as if those childish eyes
were looking into the darkness,
to see some form arise.
And a woman’s waving shadow
is passing to and fro,
now rising to the ceiling,
now bowing and bending low.
What tale do the roaring ocean,
and the night-wind, bleak and wild,
as they beat at the crazy casement,
tell to that little child?
And why do the roaring ocean,
and the night-wind, wild and bleak,
as they beat at the heart of the mother,
drive the color from her cheek?
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892)
Autumn Thoughts1
Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,
and gone the Summer’s pomp and show,
and Autumn, in his leafless bowers,
is waiting for the Winter’s snow.
I said to Earth, so cold and gray,
“An emblem of myself thou art.”
“Not so,” the Earth did seem to say,
“For Spring shall warm my frozen heart.
I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams
of warmer sun and softer rain,
and wait to hear the sound of streams
and songs of merry birds again.”
“But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,
for whom the flowers no longer blow,
who standest blighted and forlorn,
like Autumn waiting for the snow;”
“no hope is thine of sunnier hours,
thy Winter shall no more depart;
no Spring revive thy wasted flowers,
nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.”
By their Works1
Call him not heretic whose works attest
his faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
Whatever in love’s name is truly done
to free the bound and lift the fallen one
is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
is not against Him labors for our Lord.
When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore
for love’s sweet service, sought the sisters’ door,
one saw the heavenly, one the human guest,
but who shall say which loved the Master best?
Forgiveness2
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
so, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
one summer Sabbath day I strolled among
the green mounds of the village burial-place;
where, pondering how all human love and hate
find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
and cold hands folded over a still heart,
pass the green threshold of our common grave,
whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
awed for myself, and pitying my race,
our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!
Trust1
The same old baffling questions! O my friend,
I cannot answer them. In vain I send
my soul into the dark, where never burn
the lamps of science, nor the natural light
of Reason’s sun and stars! I cannot learn
their great and solemn meanings, nor discern
the awful secrets of the eyes which turn
evermore on us through the day and night
with silent challen
ge and a dumb demand,
proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,
like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,
questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!
I have no answer for myself or thee,
save that I learned beside my mother’s knee;
“All is of God that is, and is to be;
and God is good.” Let this suffice us still,
resting in childlike trust upon His will
who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)
Sun and Shadow2
As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green,
to the billows of foam-crested blue,
yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
as the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
the sun gleaming bright on her sail.
Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,—
of breakers that whiten and roar;
how little he cares, if in shadow or sun
they see him who gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
to the rock that is under his lee,
as he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
o’er the gulfs of the desolate sea.
Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
where life and its ventures are laid,
the dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
may see us in sunshine or shade;
yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,
we’ll trim our broad sail as before,
and stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
nor ask how we look from the shore!
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)
Annabel Lee1
It was many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea,
that a maiden there lived whom you may know
by the name of Annabel Lee;
and this maiden she lived with no other thought
than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
in this kingdom by the sea:
but we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,