The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman/Poems of Nature
POEMS OF NATURE
THE FRESHET
That year our Equinoctial came along
Ere the snow left us. Under mountain pines
White drifts lay frozen like the dead, and down
Through many a gorge the bristling hemlocks crossed
Their spears above the ice-enfettered brooks;
But the pent river wailed, through prison walls,
For freedom and the time to rend its chains.
At last it came: five days a drenching rain
Flooded the country; snow-drifts fell away;
The brooks grew rivers, and the river here—
A ravenous, angry torrent—tore up banks,
And overflowed the meadows, league on league.
Great cakes of ice, four-square, with mounds of hay,
Fence-rails, and scattered drift-wood, and huge beams
From broken dams above us, mill-wheel ties,
Smooth lumber, and the torn-up trunks of trees,
Swept downward, strewing all the land about.
Sometimes the flood surrounded, unawares,
Stray cattle, or a flock of timorous sheep,
And bore them with it, straggling, till the ice
Beat shape and being from them. You know how
These freshets scour our valleys. So it raged
A night and day; but when the day grew night
The storm fell off; lastly, the sun went down
Quite clear of clouds, and ere he came again
The flood began to lower.
Through the rise
We men had been at work, like water-sprites,
Lending a helping hand to cottagers
Along the lowlands. Now, at early morn,
The banks were sentry-lined with thrifty swains,
Who hauled great stores of drift-wood up the slope.
But toward the bridge our village maidens soon
Came flocking, thick as swallows after storms,
When, with light wing, they skim the happy fields
And greet the sunshine. Danger mostly gone,
They watched the thunderous passage of the flood
Between the abutments, while the upper stream,
Far as they saw, lay like a seething strait,
From hill to hill. Below, with gradual fall
Through narrower channels, all was clash and clang
And inarticulate tumult. Through the grove
Yonder, our picnic-ground, the driving tide
Struck a new channel, and the craggy ice
Scored down its saplings. Following with the rest
Came George and Lucy, not three honeymoons
Made man and wife, and happier than a pair
Of cooing ring-doves in the early June.
Two piers, you know, bore up the former bridge,
Cleaving the current, wedge-like, on the north;
Between them stood our couple, intergrouped
With many others. On a sudden loomed
An immolating terror from above,—
A floating field of ice, where fifty cakes
Had clung together, mingled with a mass
Of débris from the upper conflict, logs
Woven in with planks and fence-rails; and in front
One huge, old, fallen trunk rose like a wall
Across the channel. Then arose a cry
From all who saw it, clamoring, Flee the bridge!
Run shoreward for your lives! and all made haste,
Eastward and westward, till they felt the ground
Stand firm beneath them; but, with close-locked arms,
Lucy and George still looked, from the lower rail,
Toward the promontory where we stood,
Nor saw the death, nor seemed to hear the cry.
Run George! run Lucy! shouted all at once;
Too late, too late! for, with resistless crash,
Against both piers that mighty ruin lay
A space that seemed an hour, yet far too short
For rescue. Swaying slowly back and forth,
With ponderous tumult, all the bridge went off;
Piers, beams, planks, railings snapped their groaning ties
And fell asunder!
But the middle part,
Wrought with great bolts of iron, like a raft
Held out awhile, whirled onward in the wreck
This way and that, and washed with freezing spray.
Faster than I can tell you, it came down
Beyond our point, and in a flash we saw
George, on his knees, close-clinging for dear life,
One arm around the remnant of the rail,
One clasping Lucy. We were pale as they,
Powerless to save; but even as they swept
Across the bend, and twenty stalwart men
Ran to and fro with clamor for A rope!
A boat!—their cries together reached the shore;
Save her! Save him!—so true Love conquers all.
Furlongs below they still more closely held
Each other, 'mid a thousand shocks of ice
And seething horrors; till, at last, the end
Came, where the river, scornful of its bed,
Struck a new channel, roaring through the grove.
There, dashed against a naked beech that stood
Grimly in front, their shattered raft gave up
Its precious charge; and then a mist of tears
Blinded all eyes, through which we seemed to see
Two forms in death-clasp whirled along the flood,
And all was over.
THE SWALLOW
Had I, my love declared, the tireless wing
That wafts the swallow to her northern skies,
I would not, sheer within the rich surprise
Of full-blown Summer, like the swallow, fling
My coyer being; but would follow Spring,
Melodious consort, as she daily flies,
Apace with suns, that o'er new woodlands rise
Each morn—with rains her gentler stages bring.
My pinions should beat music with her own;
Her smiles and odors should delight me ever,
Gliding, with measured progress, from the zone
Where golden seas receive the mighty river,
Unto yon lichened cliffs, whose ridges sever
Our Norseland from the arctic surge's moan.
REFUGE IN NATURE
When the rude world's relentless war has pressed
Fiercely upon them, and the hot campaign
Closes with battles lost, some yield their lives,
Or linger in the ruins of the fight—
Unwise, and comprehending not their fate,
Nor gathering that affluent recompense
Which the all-pitying Earth has yet in store.
Surely such men have never known the love
Of Nature; nor had recourse to her fount
Of calm delights, whose influences heal
The wounded spirits of her vanquished sons;
Nor ever—in those fruitful earlier days,
Wherein her manifest forms do most enrich
Our senses void of subtler cognizance—
Wandered in summer fields, climbed the free hills,
Pursued the murmuring music of her streams,
And found the borders of her sounding sea.
But thou—when, in the multitudinous lists
Of traffic, all thine own is forfeited
At some wild hazard, or by weakening drains
Poured from thee; or when, striving for the meed
Of place, thou failest, and the lesser man
By each ignoble method wins thy due;
When the injustice of the social world
Environs thee; when ruthless public scorn,
Black slander, and the meannesses of friends
Have made the bustling practice of the world
To thee a discord and a mockery;
Or even if that last extremest pang
Be thine, and, added to such other woes,
The loss of that forever faithful love
Which else had balanced all: the putting out,
Untimely, of the light in dearest eyes;—
At such a time thou well may'st count the days
Evil, and for a season quit the field;
Yet not surrendering all human hopes,
Nor the rich physical life which still remains
God's boon and thy sustainer. It were base
To join alliance with the hosts of Fate
Against thyself, crowning their victory
By loose despair, or seeking rest in death.
More wise, betake thee to those sylvan haunts
Thou knewest when young, and, once again a child,
Let their perennial loveliness renew
Thy natural faith and childhood's heart serene.
Forgetting all the toilsome pilgrimage,
Awake from strife and shame, as from a dream
Dreamed by a boy, when under waving trees
He sleeps and dreams a languid afternoon.
Once more from these harmonious beauties gain
Repose and ransom, and a power to feel
The immortal gladness of inanimate things.
There is the mighty Mother, ever young
And garlanded, and welcoming her sons.
There are her thousand charms to soothe thy pain,
And merge thy little, individual woe
In the broad health and happy fruitfulness
Of all that smiles around thee. For thy sake
The woven arches of her forests breathe
Perpetual anthems, and the blue skies smile
Between, to heal thee with their infinite hope.
There are her crystal waters: lave thy brows,
Hot with long turmoil, in their purity;
Wash off the battle-dust from those poor limbs
Blood-stained and weary. Holy sleep shall come
Upon thee; waking, thou shalt find in bloom
The lilies, fresh as in the olden days;
And once again, when Night unveils her stars,
Thou shalt have sight of their high radiance,
And feel the old, mysterious awe subdue
The phantoms of thy pain.
And from that height
A voice shall whisper of the faith, through which
A man may act his part until the end.
Anon thy ancient yearning for the fight
May come once more, tempered by poise of chance,
And guided well with all experience.
Invisible hands may gird thy armor on,
And Nature put new weapons in thy hands,
Sending thee out to try the world again,—
Perchance to conquer, being cased in mail
Of double memories; knowing smaller griefs
Can add no sorrow to the woeful past;
And that, howbeit thou mayest stand or fall,
Earth proffers men her refuge everywhere,
And Heaven's promise is for aye the same.
SURF
Splendors of morning the billow-crests brighten,
Lighting and luring them on to the land,—
Far-away waves where the wan vessels whiten,
Blue rollers breaking in surf where we stand.
Curved like the necks of a legion of horses,
Each with his froth-gilded mane flowing free,
Hither they speed in perpetual courses,
Bearing thy riches, O beautiful sea!
Strong with the striving of yesterday's surges,
Lashed by the wanton winds leagues from the shore,
Each, driven fast by its follower, urges
Fearlessly those that are fleeting before;
How they leap over the ridges we walk on,
Flinging us gifts from the depths of the sea,—
Silvery fish for the foam-haunting falcon,
Palm-weed and pearls for my darling and me!
Light falls her foot where the rift follows after,
Finer her hair than your feathery spray,
Sweeter her voice than your infinite laughter,—
Hist! ye wild couriers, list to my lay!
Deep in the chambers of grottos auroral
Morn laves her jewels and bends her red knee:
Thence to my dear one your amber and coral
Bring for her dowry, O beautiful sea!
WOODS AND WATERS
"O ye valleys! O ye mountains!
O ye groves and crystal fountains!
How I love at liberty,
By turns, to come and visit ye!"
Come, let us burst the cerements and the shroud,
And with the livelong year renew our breath,
Far from the darkness of the city's cloud
Which hangs above us like the pall of Death.
Haste, let us leave the shadow of his wings!
Off from our cares, a stolen, happy time!
Come where the skies are blue, the uplands green;
For hark! the robin sings
Even here, blithe herald, his auroral rhyme,
Foretelling joy, and June his sovereign queen.
See, in our pavèd courts her missal scroll
Is dropped astealth, and every verdant line,
Emblazoned round with Summer's aureole,
Pictures to eager eyes, like thine and mine,
Her trees new-leaved and hillsides far away.
Ransom has come: out from this vaulted town,
Poor prisoners of a giant old and blind,
Into the breezy day,
Fleeing the sights and sounds that wear us down,
And in the fields our ancient solace find!
Again I hunger for the living wood,
The laurelled crags, the hemlocks hanging wide,
The rushing stream that will not be withstood,
Bound forward to wed him with the river's tide:
O what wild leaps through many a fettered pass,
Through knotted ambuscade of root and rock,
How white the plunge, how dark the cloven pool!
Then to rich meadow-grass,
And pastures fed by tinkling herd and flock,
Till the wide stream receives its waters cool.
Again I long for lakes that lie between
High mountains, fringed about with virgin firs,
Where hand of man has never rudely been,
Nor plashing wheel the limpid water stirs;
There let us twain begin the world again
Like those of old; while tree, and trout, and deer
Unto their kindred beings draw our own,
Till more than haunts of men,
Than place and pelf, more welcome these appear,
And better worth sheer life than we had known.
Thither, ay, thither flee, O dearest friend,
From walls wherein we grow so wan and old!
The liberal Earth will still her lovers lend
Water of life and storied sands of gold.
Though of her perfect form thou hast secured
Thy will, some charm shall aye thine hold defy,
And day by day thy passion yet shall grow,
Even as a bridegroom, lured
By the unravished secret of her eye,
Reads the bride's soul, yet never all can know.
And when from her embrace again thou 'rt torn,
(Though well for her the world were thrown away!)
At thine old tasks thou 'lt not be quite forlorn,
Remembering where is peace; and thou shalt say,
"I know where beauty has not felt the curse,—
Where, though I age, all round me is so young
That in its youth my soul's youth mirrored seems."
Yes, in their rippling verse,
For all our toil, they have not falsely sung
Who said there still was rest beyond our dreams.
THE MOUNTAIN
Two thousand feet in air it stands
Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,
Above the regions it divides
And borders with its furrowed sides,
The seaward valley laughs with light
Till the round sun o'erhangs this height;
But then the shadow of the crest
No more the plains that lengthen west
Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps
Eastward, until the coolness steeps
A darkling league of tilth and wold,
And chills the flocks that seek their fold.
Not like those ancient summits lone,
Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,—
The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,—
The sunset-portals landsmen seek,
Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,
Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,—
Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides
The mariner on tropic tides,
And flames across the Gulf afar,
A torch by day, by night a star,—
Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,
Does my serener mountain rise,
Nor aye forget its gentle birth
Upon the dewy, pastoral earth.
But ever, in the noonday light,
Are scenes whereof I love the sight,—
Broad pictures of the lower world
Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.
Irradiate distances reveal
Fair nature wed to human weal;
The rolling valley made a plain;
Its checkered squares of grass and grain;
The silvery rye, the golden wheat,
The flowery elders where they meet,—
Ay, even the springing corn I see,
And garden haunts of bird and bee;
And where, in daisied meadows, shines
The wandering river through its vines,
Move specks at random, which I know
Are herds a-grazing to and fro.
Yet still a goodly height it seems
From which the mountain pours his streams,
Or hinders, with caressing hands,
The sunlight seeking other lands.
Like some great giant, strong and proud,
He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,
And wrests its treasures, to bestow
A guerdon on the realm below;
Or, by the deluge roused from sleep
Within his bristling forest-keep,
Shakes all his pines, and far and wide
Sends down a rich, imperious tide.
At night the whistling tempests meet
In tryst upon his topmost seat,
And all the phantoms of the sky
Frolic and gibber, storming by.
By day I see the ocean-mists
Float with the current where it lists,
And from my summit I can hail
Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,—
The stately argosies of air,—
And parley with the helmsmen there;
Can probe their dim, mysterious source,
Ask of their cargo and their course,—
Whence come? where bound?—and wait reply,
As, all sails spread, they hasten by.
If foiled in what I fain would know,
Again I turn my eyes below
And eastward, past the hither mead
Where all day long the cattle feed,
A crescent gleam my sight allures
And clings about the hazy moors,—
The great, encircling, radiant sea,
Alone in its immensity.
Even there, a queen upon its shore,
I know the city evermore
Her palaces and temples rears,
And wooes the nations to her piers;
Yet the proud city seems a mole
To this horizon-bounded whole;
And, from my station on the mount,
The whole is little worth account
Beneath the overhanging sky,
That seems so far and yet so nigh.
Here breathe I inspiration rare,
Unburdened by the grosser air
That hugs the lower land, and feel
Through all my finer senses steal
The life of what that life may be,
Freed from this dull earth's density,
When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,
Shall thrid the ether at our will,
Through widening corridors of morn
And starry archways swiftly borne.
Here, in the process of the night,
The stars themselves a purer light
Give out, than reaches those who gaze
Enshrouded with the valley's haze.
October, entering Heaven's fane,
Assumes her lucent, annual reign:
Then what a dark and dismal clod,
Forsaken by the Sons of God,
Seems this sad world, to those which march
Across the high, illumined arch,
And with their brightness draw me forth
To scan the splendors of the North!
I see the Dragon, as he toils
With Ursa in his shining coils,
And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,
Confronting on the ancient field
The Bull, while in a mystic row
The jewels of his girdle glow;
Or, haply, I may ponder long
On that remoter, sparkling throng,
The orient sisterhood, around
Whose chief our Galaxy is wound;
Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,
And brooding over Learning's gleams,
I leave to gloom the under-land,
And from my watch-tower, close at hand,
Like him who led the favored race,
I look on glory face to face!
So, on the mountain-top, alone,
I dwell, as one who holds a throne;
Or prince, or peasant, him I count
My peer, who stands upon a mount,
Sees further than the tribes below,
And knows the joys they cannot know;
And, though beyond the sound of speech
They reign, my soul goes out to preach,
Far on their noble heights elsewhere,
My brother-monarchs of the air.
HOLYOKE VALLEY
"Something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again."
How many years have made their flights,
Northampton, over thee and me,
Since last I scaled those purple heights
That guard the pathway to the sea;
Or climbed, as now, the topmost crown
Of western ridges, whence again
I see, for miles beyond the town,
That sunlit stream divide the plain?
There still the giant warders stand
And watch the current's downward flow,
And northward still, with threatening hand,
The river bends his ancient bow.
I see the hazy lowlands meet
The sky, and count each shining spire,
From those which sparkle at my feet
To distant steeples tipt with fire.
For still, old town, thou art the same:
The redbreasts sing their choral tune,
Within thy mantling elms aflame,
As in that other, dearer June,
When here my footsteps entered first,
And summer perfect beauty wore,
And all thy charms upon me burst,
While Life's whole journey lay before.
Here every fragrant walk remains,
Where happy maidens come and go,
And students saunter in the lanes
And hum the songs I used to know.
I gaze, yet find myself alone,
And walk with solitary feet:
How strange these wonted ways have grown!
Where are the friends I used to meet?
In yonder shaded Academe
The rippling metres flow to-day,
But other boys at sunset dream
Of love, and laurels far away;
And ah! from yonder trellised home,
Less sweet the faces are that peer
Than those of old, and voices come
Less musically to my ear.
Sigh not, ye breezy elms, but give
The murmur of my sweetheart's vows,
When Life was something worth to live,
And Love was young beneath your boughs!
Fade beauty, smiling everywhere,
That can from year to year outlast
Those charms a thousand times more fair,
And, O, our joys so quickly past!
Or smile to gladden fresher hearts
Henceforth: but they shall yet be led,
Revisiting these ancient parts,
Like me to mourn their glory fled.
SEEKING THE MAY-FLOWER
The sweetest sound our whole year round,
'T is the first robin of the spring!
The song of the full orchard choir
Is not so fine a thing.
Glad sights are common: Nature draws
Her random pictures through the year,
But oft her music bids us long
Remember those most dear.
To me, when in the sudden spring
I hear the earliest robin's lay,
With the first trill there comes again
One picture of the May.
The veil is parted wide, and lo,
A moment, though my eyelids close,
Once more I see that wooded hill
Where the arbutus grows.
I see the village dryad kneel,
Trailing her slender fingers through
The knotted tendrils, as she lifts
Their pink, pale flowers to view.
Once more I dare to stoop beside
The dove-eyed beauty of my choice,
And long to touch her careless hair,
And think how dear her voice.
My eager, wandering hands assist
With fragrant blooms her lap to fill,
And half by chance they meet her own,
Half by our young hearts' will.
Till, at the last, those blossoms won,—
Like her, so pure, so sweet, so shy,—
Upon the gray and lichened rocks
Close at her feet I lie.
Fresh blows the breeze through hemlock-trees,
The fields are edged with green below;
And naught but youth and hope and love
We know or care to know!
Hark! from the moss-clung apple-bough,
Beyond the tumbled wall, there broke
That gurgling music of the May,—
'T was the first robin spoke!
I heard it, ay, and heard it not,—
For little then my glad heart wist
What toil and time should come to pass,
And what delight be missed;
Nor thought thereafter, year by year
Hearing that fresh yet olden song,
To yearn for unreturning joys
That with its joy belong.
A SEA-CHANGE, AT KELP ROCK
Just at this full noon of summer
There's a touch, unfelt before,
Charms our Coastland, smoothing from her
The last crease her forehead wore:
She, too, drains the sun-god's potion,
Quits her part of anchorite,
Smiles to see her leaden ocean
Sparkle in the austral light;
While the tidal depths beneath her
Palpitate with warmth and love,
And the infinite pure æther
Floods the yearning creek and cove,
Harbor, woodland, promontory,
Swarded fields that slope between,—
And our gray tower, tinged with glory,
Midway flames above the scene.
On this day of all most luring,
This one morn of all the year,
Read I—soul and body curing
In the seaward loggia here—
Once, twice, thrice, that chorus sweetest
(Fortune's darling, Sophokles!)
Of the grove whose steeds are fleetest,
Nurtured by the sacred breeze;
Of Kolonos, where in clusters
Blooms narcissus—where unfold
Ivied trees their leafy lustres
And the crocus spreads its gold;
Where the nightingales keep singing
And the streamlets never cease,
To the son of Laius bringing
Rest at last, forgiveness, peace.
Drops the book—but from its prison
Tell me now what antique spell,
Through the unclaspt cover risen,
Moves the waves I know so well;
Bids me find in them hereafter,
Dimpled to their utmost zone
With the old innumerous laughter,
An Ægean of my own?
Even so: the blue Ægean
Through our tendriled arches smiles,
And the distant empyrean
Curves to kiss enchanted isles:
Isles of Shoals, I know—yet fancy
This one day shall have free range,
And yon isles her necromancy
Shall to those of Hellas change.
Look! beyond the lanterned pharos
Girt with reefs that evermore,
Lashed and foaming, cry "Beware us!"
Cloud-white sails draw nigh the shore:
Sails, methinks, of burnished galleys
Wafting dark-browed maids within,
From those island hills and valleys,
Dread Athene's grace to win.
Sandalled, coiffed, and white-robed maidens,
Chanting in their carven boats;
List! and hear anon the cadence
Of their virginal fresh notes.
You shall hear the choric hymnos,
Or some clear prosodion
Known to Delos, Naxos, Lemnos,
Isles beneath the eastern sun.
'T is the famed Æolian quire
Bearing Pallas flowers and fruit—
Some with white hands touch the lyre,
Some with red lips kiss the flute;
You shall see the vestured priestess,
Violet-crowned, her chalice swing,
Ere yon cerylus has ceased his
Swirl upon "the sea-blue wing."
In the great Panathenæa
Climbing marble porch and stair,
Soon before the statued Dea
Votive baskets they shall bear,
Sacred palm, and fragrant censer,
Wine-cups—
But what vapor hoar,
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!
Vain the cry: from yon abysm
Now the fog-horn's woeful blast—
Stern New England's exorcism!—
Ends my vision of the past.
1890.