Thomas Moore- Collected Poetical Works
Page 25
5 On a small hill near the capital there is to be an equestrian statue of General Washington.
LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING PHILADELPHIA.
Alone by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh.
Oh Nature, though blessed and bright are thy rays,
O’er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,
Yet faint are they all to the lustre that plays
In a smile from the heart that is fondly our own.
Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain
Unblest by the smile he had languished to meet;
Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again,
Till the threshold of home had been pressed by his feet.
But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear,
And they loved what they knew of so humble a name;
And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear,
That they found in his heart something better than fame.
Nor did woman — oh woman! Whose form and whose soul
Are the spell and the life of each path we pursue;
Whether sunned in the tropics or chilled at the pole,
If woman be there, there is happiness too: —
Nor did she her enamoring magic deny, —
That magic his heart had relinquished so long, —
Like eyes he had loved was her eloquent eye,
Like them did it soften and weep at his song.
Oh, blest be the tear, and in memory oft
May its sparkle be shed o’er the wanderer’s dream;
Thrice blest be that eye, and may passion as soft,
As free from a pang, ever mellow its beam!
The stranger is gone — but he will not forget,
When at home he shall talk of the toils he has known,
To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he met,
As he strayed by the wave of the Schuylkill alone.
LINES WRITTEN AT THE COHOS, OR FALLS OF THE MOHAWK KIVER.1
Gia era in loco ove s’udia l’rimbombo
Dell’ acqua. DANTE.
From rise of morn till set of sun
I’ve seen the mighty Mohawk run;
And as I markt the woods of pine
Along his mirror darkly shine,
Like tall and gloomy forms that pass
Before the wizard’s midnight glass:
And as I viewed the hurrying pace
With which he ran his turbid race,
Rushing, alike untried and wild,
Through shades that frowned and flowers that smiled,
Flying by every green recess
That wooed him to its calm caress,
Yet, sometimes turning with the wind,
As if to leave one look behind, —
Oft have I thought, and thinking sighed,
How like to thee, thou restless tide,
May be the lot, the life of him
Who roams along thy water’s brim;
Through what alternate wastes of woe
And flowers of joy my path may go;
How many a sheltered, calm retreat
May woo the while my weary feet,
While still pursuing, still unblest,
I wander on, nor dare to rest;
But, urgent as the doom that calls
Thy water to its destined falls,
I feel the world’s bewildering force
Hurry my heart’s devoted course
From lapse to lapse, till life be done,
And the spent current cease to run.
One only prayer I dare to make,
As onward thus my course I take; —
Oh, be my falls as bright as thine!
May heaven’s relenting rainbow shine
Upon the mist that circles me,
As soft as now it hangs o’er thee!
1 There is a dreary and savage character in the country immediately about these Falls, which is much more in harmony with the wildness of such a scene than the cultivated lands in the neighborhood of Niagara.
SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE WOODS.1
qua via difficilis, quaque est via nulla
OVID Metam. lib iii. v. 227.
Now the vapor, hot and damp,
Shed by day’s expiring lamp,
Through the misty ether spreads
Every ill the white man dreads;
Fiery fever’s thirsty thrill,
Fitful ague’s shivering chill!
Hark! I hear the traveller’s song,
As he winds the woods along; —
Christian, ’tis the song of fear;
Wolves are round thee, night is near,
And the wild thou dar’st to roam —
Think, ’twas once the Indian’s home!2
Hither, sprites, who love to harm,
Wheresoe’er you work your charm,
By the creeks, or by the brakes,
Where the pale witch feeds her snakes,
And the cayman3 loves to creep,
Torpid, to his wintry sleep:
Where the bird of carrion flits,
And the shuddering murderer sits,4
Lone beneath a roof of blood;
While upon his poisoned food,
From the corpse of him he slew
Drops the chill and gory dew.
Hither bend ye, turn ye hither,
Eyes that blast and wings that wither
Cross the wandering Christian’s way,
Lead him, ere the glimpse of day,
Many a mile of maddening error
Through the maze of night and terror,
Till the morn behold him lying
On the damp earth, pale and dying.
Mock him, when his eager sight
Seeks the cordial cottage-light;
Gleam then, like the lightning-bug,
Tempt him to the den that’s dug
For the foul and famished brood
Of the she wolf, gaunt for blood;
Or, unto the dangerous pass
O’er the deep and dark morass,
Where the trembling Indian brings
Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,
Tributes, to be hung in air,
To the Fiend presiding there!5
Then, when night’s long labor past,
Wildered, faint, he falls at last,
Sinking where the causeway’s edge
Moulders in the slimy sedge,
There let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting;
Let the bull-toad taint him over,
Round him let mosquitoes hover,
In his ears and eyeballs tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Till, beneath the solar fires,
Rankling all, the wretch expires!
1 The idea of this poem occurred to me in passing through the very dreary wilderness between Batavia, a new settlement in the midst of the woods, and the little village of Buffalo upon Lake Erie. This is the most fatiguing part of the route, in travelling through the Genesee country to Niagara.
2 “The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) were settled along the banks of the Susquehannah and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, when General Sullivan, with an army of 4000 men drove them from their country to Niagara, where, being obliged to live on salted provisions, to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, were buried in one grave, where they had encamped.” — Morse’s American Geography.
3 The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a torpid state all the winter, in the bank of some creek or pond, having previously swallowed a large number of pine-knots, which are his only sustenance during the time.
4 This was the mode of punishment for murder (as Charlevoix tells us) among the Hurons. “They l
aid the dead body upon poles at the top of a cabin, and the murderer was obliged to remain several days together, and to receive all that dropped from the carcass, not only on himself but on his food.”
5 “We find also collars of porcelain, tobacco, ears of maize, skins, etc., by the side of difficult and dangerous ways, on rocks, or by the side of the falls; and these are so many offerings made to the spirits which preside in these places.” — See Charlevoix’s Letter on the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada.
Father Hennepin too mentions this ceremony; he also says, “We took notice of one barbarian, who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Anthony of Padua upon the river Mississippi.” — See Hennepin’s Voyage into North America.
TO THE HONORABLE W. R. SPENCER.
FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE.
nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas.
OVID. ex Ponto, lib. 1. e.
Thou oft hast told me of the happy hours
Enjoyed by thee in fair Italia’s bowers,
Where, lingering yet, the ghost of ancient wit
Midst modern monks profanely dares to flit.
And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid,
Haunt every stream and sing through every shade.
There still the bard who (if his numbers be
His tongue’s light echo) must have talked like thee, —
The courtly bard, from whom thy mind has caught
Those playful, sunshine holidays of thought,
In which the spirit baskingly reclines,
Bright without effort, resting while it shines, —
There still he roves, and laughing loves to see
How modern priests with ancient rakes agree:
How, ‘neath the cowl, the festal garland shines,
And Love still finds a niche in Christian shrines.
There still, too, roam those other souls of song,
With whom thy spirit hath communed so long,
That, quick as light, their rarest gems of thought,
By Memory’s magic to thy lip are brought.
But here, alas! by Erie’s stormy lake,
As, far from such bright haunts my course I take,
No proud remembrance o’er the fancy plays,
No classic dream, no star of other days
Hath left that visionary light behind,
That lingering radiance of immortal mind,
Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene,
The humblest shed, where Genius once has been!
All that creation’s varying mass assumes
Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms;
Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow,
Bright lakes expand, and conquering1 rivers flow;
But mind, immortal mind, without whose ray,
This world’s a wilderness and man but clay,
Mind, mind alone, in barren, still repose,
Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows.
Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats, and all
From the rude wigwam to the congress-hall,
From man the savage, whether slaved or free,
To man the civilized, less tame than he, —
’Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life;
Where every ill the ancient world could brew
Is mixt with every grossness of the new;
Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
And naught is known of luxury but its vice!
Is this the region then, is this the clime
For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime,
Which all their miracles of light reveal
To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?
Alas! not so — the Muse of Nature lights
Her glories round; she scales the mountain heights,
And roams the forests; every wondrous spot
Burns with her step, yet man regards it not.
She whispers round, her words are in the air,
But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,2
Without one breath of soul, divinely strong,
One ray of mind to thaw them into song.
Yet, yet forgive me, oh ye sacred few,
Whom late by Delaware’s green banks I knew;
Whom, known and loved through many a social eve,
’Twas bliss to live with, and ’twas pain to leave.3
Not with more joy the lonely exile scanned
The writing traced upon the desert’s sand,
Where his lone heart but little hoped to find
One trace of life, one stamp of human kind,
Than did I hail the pure, the enlightened zeal,
The strength to reason and the warmth to feel,
The manly polish and the illumined taste,
Which, — mid the melancholy, heartless waste
My foot has traversed, — oh you sacred few!
I found by Delaware’s green banks with you.
Long may you loathe the Gallic dross that runs
Through your fair country and corrupts its sons;
Long love the arts, the glories which adorn
Those fields of freedom, where your sires were born.
Oh! if America can yet be great,
If neither chained by choice, nor doomed by fate
To the mob-mania which imbrutes her now,
She yet can raise the crowned, yet civic brow
Of single majesty, — can add the grace
Of Rank’s rich capital to Freedom’s base,
Nor fear the mighty shaft will feebler prove
For the fair ornament that flowers above; —
If yet released from all that pedant throng,
So vain of error and so pledged to wrong,
Who hourly teach her, like themselves, to hide
Weakness in vaunt and barrenness in pride,
She yet can rise, can wreathe the Attic charms
Of soft refinement round the pomp of arms,
And see her poets flash the fires of song,
To light her warriors’ thunderbolts along; —
It is to you, to souls that favoring heaven
Has made like yours, the glorious task is given: —
Oh! but for such, Columbia’s days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
Her fruits would fall, before her spring were o’er.
Believe me, Spencer, while I winged the hours
Where Schuylkill winds his way through banks of flowers,
Though few the days, the happy evenings few;
So warm with heart, so rich with mind they flew,
That my charmed soul forgot its wish to roam,
And rested there, as in a dream of home.
And looks I met, like looks I’d loved before,
And voices too, which, as they trembled o’er
The chord of memory, found full many a tone
Of kindness there in concord with their own.
Yes, — we had nights of that communion free,
That flow of heart, which I have known with thee
So oft, so warmly; nights of mirth and mind,
Of whims that taught, and follies that refined.
When shall we both renew them? when, restored
To the gay feast and intellectual board,
Shall I once more enjoy with thee and thine
Those whims that teach, those follies that refine?
Even now, as, wandering upon Erie’s shore,
I hear Niagara’s distant cataract roar,
I sigh for home, — alas! these weary feet
Have many a mile to journey, ere we meet.
1 This epithet was suggested by Charlevoix’s striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi.
2 Alluding to the fanciful notion of “words
congealed in northern air.”
3 In the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends, at Philadelphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me. Mr. Dennie has succeeded in diffusing through this cultivated little circle that love for good literature and sound politics which he feels so zealously himself, and which is so very rarely the characteristic of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me of illiberality for the picture which I have given of the ignorance and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, as I ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could not value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; and in learning from them what Americans can be, I but see with the more indignation what Americans are.
BALLAD STANZAS.
I knew by the smoke, that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near.
And I said, “If there’s peace to be found in the world,
“A heart that was humble might hope for it here!”
It was noon, and on flowers that languished around
In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound
But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree.
And, “Here in this lone little wood,” I exclaimed,
“With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye,
“Who would blush when I praised her, and weep if I blamed,
How blest could I live, and how calm could I die!
“By the shade of yon sumach, whose red berry dips
“In the gush of the fountain, how sweet to recline,
“And to know that I sighed upon innocent lips,
“Which had never been sighed on by any but mine!”
A CANADIAN BOAT SONG.
WRITTEN ON THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.1
et remigem cantus hortatur.
QUINTILIAN.
Faintly as tolls the evening chime
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We’ll sing at St. Ann’s our parting hymn.2
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past.
Why should we yet our sail unfurl?
There is not a breath the blue wave to curl,
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we’ll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight’s past.
Utawas’ tide! this trembling moon