Edmund Clarence Stedman

“ The treasure-trove, the gifts we ask of Fate,
Come far apart, come mildewed, come too late.
What says the legend? "All that man desires
Greatly at morn he gains ere day expires;"
But Age craves not the fruits that gladden Youth,—
It sits among its vineyards, full of ruth,
Finding the owner's right to what is best
Of little worth without the seeker's zest.
Yet something has been gained. Not all a waste
The light-winged years have vanished in their haste,
Howbeit their gift was scant of what we thought,
So much we thought not of they slowly wrought! ”

“ Yes, even my Viking (ere his namesake came,
⁠⁠And bounteous Harvey) .
"H. M.," Her Majesty's? No, though in sooth
⁠Victorian decades somewhat overlay us,
I read, with that braw accent of our youth,
⁠⁠Henricus Meus.
For am I not of them who, down the years
⁠Now closed in Life's inexorable journal,
Have known your hand's strong grip that time endears,
⁠⁠Your words fraternal?
Yet knew you best, and last, from golden books,
⁠The rare quintessence of your mystic spirit,—
When that through mortal eyes no longer looks
⁠⁠May mine be near it! ”

“ Let fall, O South, your leaves of palm,—O North, your sprigs of pine!
But when, with every ripened year, we keep the harvest-home,
And to the dear Thanksgiving-feast our sons and daughters come,
When children's children throng the board in the old homestead spread,
And the bent soldier of these wars is seated at the head,
Long, long the lads shall listen to hear the gray-beard tell
Of those who fought at Gettysburg and stood their ground so well:
"'Twas for the Union and the Flag," the veteran shall say,
"Our grand old Army held the ridge, and won that glorious day!" ”

“ Gives youth to all who taste it, we will drink
Deep draughts, until the furrows leave thy brow,
And I shall walk in beauty, as when first
I saw thee from afar in Sparta's groves.
But if Charybdis seize our keel, or swift
Black currents bear us down the noisome wave
That leads to Hades, till the vessel sink
In Stygian waters, none the less our souls
Shall gain the farther shore, and, hand in hand,
Walk from the strand across Elysian fields,
'Mong happy thronging shades, that point and say:
"There go the great Ulysses, loved of gods,
And she, his wife, most faithful unto death!" ”

“ We know, but not to mortal ears may tell:
⁠No answer unto man's desire
Shall thus be made, to quench his eager fire.
⁠Under these orchard trees
⁠Still pure and fresh the breeze
As where the plane-tree whispered to the elm; [1]
⁠The thrush and robin bring
⁠A new-world offering
Of song,—nor are we banished from the realm
⁠Of thought that as the wind is pure,
And converse deep, and memories that endure.
⁠Some honey dropped as well,
⁠Some dew of hydromel
From wilding meadow-bees, upon the lips
⁠Of poet and sage who found,
⁠Here on our own dear ground,
Light as of old ”

“ From her most sacred lips, upon the ears
⁠Of Beatrice, these words of wonder fell:
"Daughter, thy sins are pardoned; dry thy tears,
⁠And in this house again my mercies tell,
For, in thy stead, myself these woeful years
⁠Have governed here and borne thine office well.
Take back the keys: save thee and me alone
No one thy fall and penance yet hath known!"
Even then, as faded out that loveliness,
⁠The abbess, looking down, herself descried
Clean-robed and spotless, such as all confess
⁠To be a saint and fit for Heaven's bride. ”

“ Her consort's goodness, and his glory-roll,
Yet knew not they had carved upon the scroll
That last assurance of his stainless heart,—
⁠For such they deemed his words who heard them fall,—
"Of all great things this Prince achieved his part,
⁠Yet wedded Love to him was worth them all."
Thus read the Queen: till now, her injured soul
Of its forlornness had not felt the whole.
Now all her heart was broken. There she fell,
⁠And to the skies her lofty spirit fled.
The wrong of those mute words had smitten well.
⁠A cry went up: "The Queen! the Queen is dead! ”

“ CHORUS.
⁠Woe! Woe!
King! O how shall I weep for thy dying?
⁠What shall my fond heart say anew?
Thou in the web of the spider art lying,
⁠Breathing out life by a death she shall rue!
SEMI-CHORUS.
Alas! alas for this slavish couch! By a sword
⁠Two-edged, by a hand untrue,
Thou art smitten, even to death, my lord!
KLYTAIMNESTRA.
⁠Hath he not subtle Atè brought
⁠Himself, to his kingly halls?
'Twas on our own dear offspring,—yea,
On Iphigeneia, wept for still, he wrought
The doom that cried for the doom by which he falls. ”

“ That your footfall's trust it might almost woo,
Were it smooth and low for one to tread?
So clear and warm, so bright, so dark,
That he who looks on it can but mark
'T is a different tide from the far-away
Perpetual waters, old and gray,
And can but wonder if Mother Earth
Has given a younger ocean birth.
Do you know how surely the trade-wind blows
To west-sou'west, through the whole round year?
How, after the hurricane comes and goes,
For nine fair moons there is naught to fear?
How the brave wind carries the tide before
Its breath, and on to the southwest shore? ”

“ Worldlings, who say the eagle should mate with eagle, after his kind,
Nor have learned from what far and diverse cliffs the twain each other find,
Yours is the old, old story, of age forgetting its wiser youth;
Of eyes which are keen for others' good and blind to an inward truth.
But the pride which closed the father's doors swelled in the young man's veins,
And he led his bride, in the sight of all, through the pleasant Monmouth lanes,
To the little farm his grandsire gave, years since, for a birthday gift:
Unto such havens unforeseen the barks of our fortune drift! ”

“ For the daring that brings him a night-rider here;
British gallants by day through her doors come and go,
But a Yankee's the winner of Theo Prevost.
Where's the widow or maid with a mouth to be kist,
When Burr comes a-wooing, that long would resist?
Lights and wine on the beaufet, the shutters all fast,
And "Old Put" stamps in vain till an hour has flown past—
But an hour, for eight leagues must be covered ere day;
Laughs Aaron, "Let Washington frown as he may,
When he hears of me next, in a raid on the foe,
He'll forgive this night's tryst with the Widow Prevost!" ”

“ Sweet Nature throbbed for us alone—her mother-soul divining
⁠No fonder pair that fleeting hour her zephyrs sighed above.
Amid the nodding rushes the heron drank his tipple,
⁠The night-hawk's cry and whir anigh a deeper stillness made,
A thousand little starlights danced upon the river's ripple,
⁠And the silver poplar rustled as we kissed within its shade.
⁠1884.
A VIGIL
⁠I walk the lane's dim hollow,—
⁠Past is the twilight hour,
⁠But stealthy shadows follow
⁠And Night withholds her power,
For somewhere in the eastern sky
⁠The shrouded moon is high. ”

“ Not for ourselves alone the God, who fathered that stripling
Erôs, begat him, Nicias, as we have flattered us: neither
Unto ourselves the first have beauties seemed to be beauties,—
Not unto us, who are mortal and do not foresee the morrow;
But that heart of brass, Amphitryôn's son, who awaited⁠5
Stoutly the ruthless lion, he too was fond of a youth once—
Graceful Hylas, the lad with the curling locks,—and he taught him
All fair things, as a father would teach the child of his bosom,
All which himself had learned, and great and renowned in song grown ”

“ And laurelled bards enow their wreaths have won;—
When from some topmost spray began to chant
And flute, and trill, a warbling visitant,
A catbird, riotous the world above,
Hasting to spend his heritage ere love
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 ”

“ The great Spring-tide roll grandly in with swelling surge and roar:
It seems no wall can stay its leap or balk its wild desire
Beyond the bound that Heaven hath fixed to higher mount, and higher;
But now, when whitest lifts its crest, most loud its billows call,
Touched by the Power that led them on, they fall, and fall, and fall.
Even thus, unstayed upon his course, to Gettysburg the foe
His legions led, and fought, and fled, and might no further go.
Full many a dark-eyed Southern girl shall weep her lover dead;
But with a price the fight was ours,—we too have tears to shed! ”

“ Something, I know not what: perhaps the spirit of eager youth,
That named her a queen of queens at once, and loved her in very truth;
That threw its pearl of pearls at her feet, and offered her, in a breath,
The costliest gift a man can give from his cradle to his death.
The third time that I saw her—this woman called Estelle—
She passed her milk-white arm through mine and dazzled me with her spell;
A blissful fever thrilled my veins, and there, in the moonbeams white,
I yielded my soul to the fierce control of that maddening delight! ”

“ Anon the coming of the Queen was told,
⁠And mounted guards, with sable plumes at helm,
Made through the middle, like a reaper's swath,
A straight, wide roadway for the sovereign's path,
Then rose the murmurous sound of her advance,
⁠And, with the crown-prince, and her other brood
Led close behind, she came. Her countenance
⁠Moved not to right nor left, until she stood
Before the tomb; yet those, who took the breath
That clothed her progress, felt a waft of death.
O noble martyr! queenliest intent!
⁠Strong human soul, that holds to pride through all! ”

“ With eyes of wonder at our world of grief and wrong?
⁠Yet thou wast Nature's prodigal; the last
⁠Unto whose lips her beauteous mouth she bent
⁠An instant, ere thy kinsmen, fading fast,
⁠Their lorn way went.
⁠What though the faun and oread had fled?
⁠A tenantry thine own,
⁠Peopling their leafy coverts lone,
With thee still dwelt as when sweet Fancy was not dead;
⁠Not dead as now, when we the visionless,
⁠In nature's alchemy more woeful wise,
⁠Say that no thought of us her depths possess,—
⁠No love, her skies. ”

“ We know what 't is to wake
From an illusive dream, at morning's break,
That we again are dark-haired, buoyant, young,—
Scanning, once more, our spring-time mates among,
The grand hexameter—that anthem free
Of the pursuing, loud-resounding sea,—
To wake, anon, and know another day
Already speeds for one whose hairs are gray,—
In this swift change to lose a third of life
Lopped by the stroke of Memory's ruthless knife,
And feel, though naught go ill, it is a pain
That youth, lost youth, can never come again! ”

“ Whose youth was nurtured at thy breast,
⁠Who loved thee with such tender yearning!
He knew thy fields and woodland ways,
⁠And deemed thy humbleest son his brother:—
Asleep, beyond our blame, or praise,
⁠We yield him back, O gentle Mother!
Of praise, of blame he drank his fill:
⁠Who has not read the life-long story?
And dear we hold his fame, but still
⁠The man was dearer than his glory. ”

“ How poor, how good, is wealth; how surely fame
And beauty must return to whence they came,
Yet not for this less beautiful and rare—
It is their evanescence makes them fair
And worth possession. Ours the age still strong
With passions, that demand not curb nor thong;
And ours the age not old enough to set
Youth's joys above their proper worth, nor yet
So young as still to trust its empery more
Than unseen hands which lead to fortune's door. ”

“ Beyond their wont—that has not reached their ken?
⁠"What else are poets used to sing,
Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love?
⁠But ah! it needs no words to move
⁠Young hearts to some impassioned vow,
⁠To whom already on the wing
⁠The blind god hastens. Even now
⁠Their pulses quiver with a thrill
⁠Than all that wisdom wiser still.
Nor any need to tell of rustling bays,
Of honor ever at the victor's hand,
⁠To them who at the portals stand
Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control
To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze,
Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal. ”

“ Glad Youth may not revisit, like the Spring
That routs her northern Winter and anew
Melts off the hoar snow from her puissant hills.
She could not make thee deathless; no, but thou,
Thou sangest her always in abiding verse
And hast thy fame immortal—as we say
Immortal in this Earth that yet must die,
And in this land now fairest and most young
Of all fair lands that yet must perish with it.
Thy words shall last: albeit thou growest old,
Men say; but never old the poet's soul
Becomes ”

“ Through the long years of hopes and fears, the nation's constant heart,—
Men who have driven so oft the foe, so oft have striven in vain,
Yet ever in the perilous hour have crossed his path again,—
At last we have our hearts' desire, from them we met have wrung
A victory that round the world shall long be told and sung!
It was the memory of the past that bore us through the fray,
That gave the grand old Army strength to conquer on this day!
O now forget how dark and red Virginia's rivers flow,
The Rappahannock's tangled wilds, the glory and the woe ”

“ For the grandsire's vigor, rude and rare, asleep in the son had lain,
To waken in Hugh, the grandson's frame, with the ancient force again;
And ere the boy, said the Monmouth wives, had grown to his seventh year,
Well could you tell whose mantling blood swelled in his temples clear.
Tall, and bent in the meeting brows; swarthy of hair and face;
Shoulders parting square, but set with the future huntsman's grace;
Eyes alive with a fire which yet the old man's visage wore
At times, like the flash of a thunder-cloud when the storm is almost o'er. ”

“ Horse and horseman of the foe
The blast of his bugle-charge should know,
And his men should water their steeds, at will,
From the banks of Southern river and rill.
5
How many are there of us, in this
Discordant social wilderness,
Whose thriftiest scions the power gain,
Through meet conditions of sun and rain,
To yield, on the fairest blossoming shoot,
A mellow harvest of perfect fruit?
Fashioned after so rare a type,
How should his life grow full and ripe,
There, in the passionless haunts of Peace,
Through trade, and tillage, and wealth's increase? ”

“ The osprey's slow imperial swoop, the scrawny heron's rise;
Nursing a longing for larger life than circled a rural home,
An instinct of leadership within, and of action yet to come.
4
Curtain of shifting seasons dropt on moor and meadow and hall,
Open your random vistas of changes that come with time to all!
Hugh grown up to manhood; foremost, searching the county through,
Of the Monmouth youth, in birth and grace, and the strength to will and do.
The father, past the prime of life, and his temples flecked with toil,
A bookman still, and leaving to Hugh the care of stock and soil. ”

“ Mankind, be sure, shall Earth more nobly share;
No churl his measure shall unduly mete;
And where are set thy feet
Life shall be counted lordlier and more fair.
XIV
Science shall yield new spells for man to know,
And bid thee consecrate to mortal weal
All that her henchmen in thy gates bestow;
Nor lofty then, nor low,
Save to his race each ministrant is leal.
XV
Thine be it still the undying antique speech,
The grove's high thought, the wing'd Hellenic lyre,
Unvexed of soul thy acolytes to teach,—
So shall they also reach
Their lamps, and light them at a quenchless fire ”

“ As though it heard the stag-hound's distant bark.
⁠The wistful Prince with loitering purpose bode,
And thought how good it were to spend one's life
Far off from men, nor jostled with their strife.
Even as he mused he saw his host ahead,
⁠Speeding to welcome him, in lordly wont,
And all the household in a line bestead;
⁠And lightly with that escort, at the front,
A peerless woman rode across the green;
Then the Prince thought, "It surely is the Queen,
Who comes to meet me of her loving grace!" ”

“ 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?
⁠As from the hollow deep
⁠The soul's strong tide must keep
Its purpose still. We rest not, though we hear
⁠No voice from heaven let fall,
⁠No chant antiphonal
Sounding through sunlit clefts that open near;
⁠We look not outward, but within,
And think not quite to end as we begin. ”

“ No Syrian dainty, this, of which thou speakest.
KASSANDRA (at the portal) .
Yet will I in the palace wail my own
And Agamemnon's fate! Enough of life!
Alas! O friends!
Yet not for naught I quail, not as a bird
Snared in the bush: bear witness, though I die,
A woman's slaughter shall requite my own,
And, for this man ill-yoked, a man shall fall!
Thus prays of you a stranger, at death's door.
CHORUS.
Lost one, I rue with thee thy foretold doom! ”

“ Night spreads a feast the day's long toil has won:
Eat, drink,—enough, no more,—and speak, ye wise,
Speak—but enough, no more, at set of sun!
⁠Sunset Club, 1891.
ON WHITE CARNATIONS GIVEN ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY
Exquisite tufts of perfume and of light,
⁠Fair gift of Summer unto Autumn borne,
Were but the years ye calendar as white,
⁠As sweet, as you, Age could not be forlorn.
Yet, beauteous symbols of my only gain—
⁠Love, portioned from your givers' envied share,
Honor, whose laurel at their feet hath lain—
⁠Make me this night of Life's waste unaware! ”

“ To feel once more that fresh, wild thrill
⁠I'd give—but who can live youth over.
THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW
Once more on the fallow hillside, as of old, I lie at rest
For an hour, while the sunshine trembles through the walnut-tree to the west,—
Shakes on the rocks and fragrant ferns, and the berry-bushes around;
And I watch, as of old, the cattle graze in the lower pasture-ground. ”

“ To nerve the righteous hand that strove,
⁠And blaze in the oppressor's path?
Fair Earth, our dust is thine indeed!
⁠Too soon he reached the voiceless portal,—
That whither leads? Where lies the mead
⁠He gained, and knew himself immortal?
Or, tell us, on what distant star,
⁠Where even as here are toil and wrong,
With strength renewed he lifts afar
⁠A voice of aid, a war-cry strong?
What fruit, this stern Olympiad past,
⁠Has that rich nature elsewhere yielded,
What conquest gained and knowledge vast,
⁠What kindred beings loved and shielded! ”

“ The honor of my grandsire's name;
And my father shall see how pure and good
Runs in these veins the olden blood."
5
Shore and inland their men have sent:
Away, to the mountain regiment,
The silver-hazed Potomac heights,
The circling raids, the hundred fights,
The booth, the bivouac, the tent.
Away, from the happy Monmouth farms,
To noontide marches, night alarms,
Death in the shadowy oaken glades,
Emptied saddles, broken blades,—
All the turmoil that soldiers know
Who gallop to meet a mortal foe,
Some to conquer, some to fall:
War hath its chances for one and all. ”

“ And a dust of gold falls everywhere from the soft midsummer's wing,
I only know from my poets, or from pictures that hither come,
Sweet with the smile of the hawthorn-hedge and the scent of the harvest-home.
But July in our own New England—I bask myself in its prime,
As one in the light of a face he loves, and has not seen for a time!
Again the perfect blue of the sky; the fresh green woods; the call
Of the crested jay; the tangled vines that cover the frost-thrown wall:
Sounds and shadows remembered well! ”