Edmund Clarence Stedman

“ Nancy, Sarah, Emily, Louise,—proud maidens four;
Nancy tall and angular, Louise a rosy dear,
And Emily as fine as lace but just a little sere.
What was it, pray, your life within the mansion grand and old,
Four dormers in its gambrel-roof, their shingles grim with mould?
How dwelt you in your spinsterhood, ye ancient virgins lone,
From infancy to bag-and-muff so resolutely grown?
Each Sunday morning out you drove to Parson Arms's church,
As straight as if Time had not left you somehow in the lurch ”

“ O what a sore campaign,
⁠Of which men long shall tell,
Ended when he was slain—
⁠When this our greatest fell!
For him no mould had cast
⁠A bullet surely sped;
No falchion, welded fast,
⁠His iron blood had shed.
Death on the hundredth field
⁠Had failed to bring him low;
He was not born to yield
⁠To might of mortal foe.
Even to himself unknown,
⁠He bore the fated sword,
Forged somewhere near His throne
⁠Of battles still the Lord.
That weapon when he drew,
⁠Back rolled the wrath of men,—
Their onset feebler grew,
⁠The Nation rose again. ”

“ In which, lest thou shouldst be companionless,
Unto the oracles thou hadst access,—
The sacred groves that with my presence yearn."
⁠The voice was heard by mountain, dell, and stream,
⁠⁠Meadow and wilderness—
All fair things vestured by the changing year,
Which now awoke in joy to welcome one most dear.
"He comes!" declared the unseen ones that haunt
⁠The dark recesses, the infinitude
Of whispering old oaks and soughing pines.
"He comes!" the warders of the forest shrines
Sang joyously. ”

“ With song, wit and wassail, and true hearts anigh.
⁠Centuria, Centuria, vivat Centuria!
Then love as they loved when thine eldest was young,
⁠Centuria!
O the comrades that gossipped and painted and sung,
O the smoke-cloud that lingers their places among!
⁠Centuria, Centuria, vivat Centuria!
And sing as they'll sing in thy fair years untold,
⁠Centuria,
Strong hearts that shall follow, as tender and bold;
We may fade, we shall pass, but thou growest not old ”

“ ARIEL
⁠Wert thou on earth to-day, immortal one,
⁠How wouldst thou, in the starlight of thine eld,
⁠The likeness of that morntide look upon
⁠Which men beheld?
⁠How might it move thee, imaged in time's glass,
⁠As when the tomb has kept
⁠Unchanged the face of one who slept
Too soon, yet moulders not, though seasons come and pass?
⁠Has Death a wont to stay the soul no less? ”

“ Son of the Church, though worldlings spake her creed
⁠And smiled askance, even in the altar fold,
This man, this piteous soul, believed indeed
⁠⁠With the stern faith of old.
Unquestioning aught, aye, in the eager West
⁠Surcharged with life that mocks the vague unknown,
His ligature of anguish unconfest
⁠⁠He wore alone—alone.
Alone? but trebly welded links of fate
⁠More lives than one are bidden to endure,
Forged in a chain's indissoluble weight
⁠⁠Of agonies more sure. ”

“ For us the night was musical, for us the meadows shining;
⁠The summer air was odorous that we might breathe and love;
Sweet Nature throbbed for us alone—her mother-soul divining
⁠No fonder pair that fleeting hour her zephyrs sighed above. ”

“ Their speed transmute to fire, and bring the Light,
⁠The co-eternal beam
⁠Of the blind minstrel's dream;
But think not that bright heat to know aright,
⁠Nor how the trodden seed takes root,
Waked by its glow, and climbs to flower and fruit.
⁠Behind each captured law
⁠Weird shadows give us awe;
Press with your swords, the phantoms still evade;
⁠Through our alertest host
⁠Wanders at ease some ghost,
Now here, now there, by no enchantment laid,
⁠And works upon our souls its will,
Leading us on to subtler mazes still.
⁠We think, we feel, we are ”

“ And in thought I yet behold you
⁠Nearing the enchanted zone,—
(With delight of life the stronger
As we sailed, each blue league longer,
Toward the shore of which I told you,
⁠And the stars myself had known) ”

“ PORTRAIT D'UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE
(FORTUNY)
The hand that drew thee lies in Roman soil,
⁠Whilst on the canvas thou hast deathless grown,
Endued by him who deemed it meaner toil
⁠To give the world a portrait save thine own. ”

“ But 't was ill to see a maid so young
⁠Who never sang or smiled.
'T is sad to bide with an old, old man,
⁠And between the wave and sky
To watch all day the sea-fowl play,
⁠While lone ships hasten by. ”

“ Among all his tribe he must be king,—
⁠If in some wild tract you met him so.
"Do you love me still," she asked, "as when
⁠You swore it first?" "Have never a doubt!"
"But I have a fancy—men are men,
⁠And one whim drives another out,"—
"What fancy? Is this all? Have done:
⁠You tire me." "Look you, Marco! oh,
I should die if another woman won
⁠Your love,—but would kill you first, you know!" ”

“ Life runs its hackneyed round,—but still
⁠One tireless boon can Brian win,—
Can picture in this modern time
⁠A life no more the world shall know,
And dream of Beauty at her prime
⁠In Parma, with Correggio. ”

“ Should music change to madness in his throat,
Leaving him naught but one discordant note.
And as my home-bred chorister outvied
The nightingale, old England's lark beside,
I thought—What need to borrow? Lustier clime
Than ours Earth has not,—nor her scroll a time
Ampler of human glory and desire
To touch the plume, the brush, the lips, with fire ”

“ What cloud-curtain dense, and denser,
⁠Looms between them and the shore?
Off, thou Norseland Terror, clouding
⁠Hellas with the jealous wraith
Which, the gods of old enshrouding,
⁠Froze their hearts, the poet saith! ”

“ Where copses thrill with the wood-doves' cooing,
And astral moths on the flight are wooing;
While the light colibris poise unmoving,—
⁠Winged Loves that mate in the trembling air.
Nay, love itself will languish in the days
⁠When Summer never doffs his burning helm.
No lasting links to bind the soul are wrought
Where passion takes no deeper cast from thought ”

“ Land all their ribald braves,
Captives and naked slaves,
⁠With many a bale and cask,
⁠⁠By rapine won;
Armor and altar-plate
⁠Brought over sea:
Pesos, a countless weight,
⁠⁠The horde divide—
To each an equal share,
Else blades are in the air! ”

“ To watch the sea of pain whereon our galleys drift.
⁠Therefrom arose with thee that lyric cry,
⁠Sad cadence of the disillusioned soul
⁠That asks of heaven and earth its destiny,—
⁠Or joy or dole.
⁠Wild requiem of the heart whose vibratings,
⁠With laughter fraught, and tears,
⁠Beat through the century's dying years
While for one more dark round the old Earth plumes her wings. ”

“ Give me to die unwitting of the day,
⁠And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear:
⁠Not swathed and couched until the lines appear
Of Death's wan mask upon this withering clay,
But as that old man eloquent made way
⁠From Earth, a nation's conclave hushed anear ”

“ The firefly's light, and the glow
Of the moonlit waters low,—
All things that to night belong
And can do my love no wrong
⁠Bear her this hour for me.
Speed thee, wind of the deep,
⁠For the cyclone comes in wrath! ”

“ No presence east or west,—
Only the stars—the restless wondering sea
Bearing us back, from foam-tipped crest to crest,
Toward the one small part ourselves inherit
Of this lone darkling world—and call our home. ”

“ With bush and bloom and brake to you unknown;
There, while the hidden thrush his song repeats,
⁠The rose shall tinge your cheek the livelong day.
Stay in the clime where living is loving
⁠And the lips make music unaware ”

“ And lived in that fleet course from youth to eld,
⁠Count them who will, his century of years?
The Power that arches heaven's orbway round
⁠Gave to this planet's brood its soul of fire,
Its heart of passion,—and for life unbound
⁠By chain or creed the measureless desire ”

“ To feel betimes our envious selves are fain,—
⁠Seeing that, as birds in night
⁠Wind-driven against the light
Whose unseen armor mocks their stress and pain,
⁠Most men fall baffled in the surge
That to their cry responds but with a dirge. ”

“ Each floats ever and on
⁠As the round green Earth is floating
Out through the sea of space
⁠Bearing our mortal kind,
Parasites soon to be gone,
⁠Whom others be sure are noting,
While to their astral race
⁠We in our turn are blind. ”

“ Gloom of the night,—with these abide his strain,—
⁠And these are thine, though he has passed away;
Their elemental force had roused to might
⁠Great Nature's child in this her realm supreme,—
From their commingling he had guessed aright
⁠The plenitude of all we know or dream. ”

“ Gropes through the mist,—a little light is given;
⁠And aye from life and death
⁠We strive, with indrawn breath,
To somehow wrest the truth, and long have striven,
⁠Nor pause, though book and star and clod
Reply, Canst thou by searching find out God? ”

“ The one apt word? For well the painter knew
Art's alchemy and law; her nobleness
Was in his soul, her wisdom in his speech,
And loyalty was housed in that true heart,
Gentle yet strong, and yielding not one whit
Of right or purpose. Now, not more afar
The light of last year's Yule fire than the smile
Of Gifford, nor more irreclaimable
Its vapor mingled with the wintry air. ”

“ That gather anear the window-pane
Where the winter frost all day has lain?
They are soulless elves, who fain would peer
Within, and laugh at our Christmas cheer:
⁠Ring fleetly, chimes! Swift, swift, my rhymes!
⁠⁠They are made of the mocking mist.
⁠⁠Noël! Noël!
⁠Cease, cease, each Christmas bell!
⁠⁠Under the holly bough,
Where the happy children throng and shout,
What shadow seems to flit about?
Is it the mother, then, who died
Ere the greens were sere last Christmas-tide?
⁠Hush, falling chimes! Cease, cease, my rhymes! ”

“ Where the shore-grape's tendriled runners spread
And purple trumpet-creepers fall,
And the frangipani's clusters shed
Their starry sweets withal.
The silly cactuses writhe around,
Yet cannot choose but in grace to mingle,
This side the twittering waters sound,
On the other opens a low green dingle,
And between your ship and the shore and sky
The frigate-birds like fates appear,
The flapping pelican feeds about,
The tufted cardinals sing and fly.
So fair the shore, one has no fear ”

“ With those high bards who lingering charmed the age
⁠Ere one by one they joined the statued throng.
I hear the dirge for beauty sped, and faith
⁠Astray in space and time's far archways lost,
Till Life itself becomes a tenuous wraith,
⁠A wandering shade whom wandering shades accost. ”

“ Love will not forever wait;
Roses fade when gathered late.
II
Fie, for shame, Sir Malcontent!
How can time be better spent
Than in wooing? I would wed
When the clover blossoms red,
When the air is full of bliss,
And the sunshine like a kiss. ”

“ Where low and dun the midnight sun
⁠Upon the wave rides forth!
What country is most dear of all
⁠Beneath the heaven blue?
The dearest land is one's own land,
⁠Go search the wide world through.
O know you not that henceforth
⁠All countries are as one? ”

“ His corse the deep she gave,
⁠Her life to hate;
Upon the land and wave
⁠⁠Brought sudden fear:
No bearded Capitan,
Since first their woes began
⁠ (The orphaned niñas prate) ,
⁠⁠Cost them so dear! ”

“ With towers the palm-tops could not hide;
⁠The ramparts toward ocean frowned;
Beneath, within the rock-hewn hold,
He heaped a monarch's store of gold;
He made his nobles in a breath;
He held the power of life and death ”

“ What seest thou, where the peaks about thee stand,
⁠Far up the ridge that severs from our view
⁠That realm unvisited? What prospect new
Holds thy rapt eye? What glories of the land,
Which from yon loftier cliff thou now hast scanned,
⁠Upon thy visage set their lustrous hue? ”

“ Beneath yon firmament,
⁠The New World to the Old
My sword and summons sent,
⁠My azure flag unrolled:
The Old World's hands renew
Their strength; the form ye view
⁠Came from a living mould
⁠⁠In glory blent. ”

“ Loose their swords, sit athwart, through the fleet reach yon shore.
Not a word—not a plash of the thick-muffled oar!
Once across, once again in the seat and away—
Five leagues are soon over when love has the say ”

“ Laboring Afric, loaded wain,
Bearing sweets and spices, move;
On the happy heights above
Love his seat has chosen well,
Dreamful ease and silence dwell,
Life is all entranced, and time
Passes like a tinkling rhyme. ”

“ The cross, the castled flag of Spain,
⁠To the Pacific shore;
The tide still ebbs a league from quay,
The buzzards scour the emptied Bay:
"There's a heretic to singe to-day,—
Come out! Come out!"—still strive to say
⁠The Bells of Panama. ”

“ O life! O rarest hour!
⁠When the dark world onward rolls,
And the fiery planets drift,
⁠Then from our commingled souls
Clouds of passion and of power,
⁠Flames of incense, lift!
Come, for the world is turning
⁠To meet the morning star! ”

“ To the chill grasse where shadowes passe
⁠And leaflesse branches nodde;
There keepe my watche, and crye—Alas
⁠That Love may not forget,
That Joye must have swifte ending
⁠And Life be laggard yet! ”

“ Fern-Land's mimic forestry;
⁠Royal tree-ferns
Canopy the nestling wee ferns
That with every pointed frond
Lend their lords a duteous ear;
Golden ferns a sunshine make—
Fleck their beauty on the brake ”

“ This was not Thyrsis! no, the minstrel lone
⁠And reverend, the woodland singer hoar,
Who was dear Nature's nursling, and the priest
Whom most she loved; nor had his office ceased
But for her mandate: "Seek again thine own;
⁠The walks of men shall draw thy steps no more!" ”

“ Nor gave one cry, but there on the spot
⁠Drove to the heart her poniard-blade,
Straight, like a man, and fell, nor stirred
⁠Again;—so that fine pair were dead;
One lied, and the other kept her word,—
⁠And death pays debts, when all is said. ”