The Poet's Countersign

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:44:17 +0000

"I grant, sweet soul, thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again;
He lends thee virtue, — and he stole that word
From thy behavior; beauty doth he give,
And found it on thy cheek; he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live."

Across these meadows, o'er the hills,
Beside our sleeping waters, hurrying rills,
Through many a woodland dark, and many a bright arcade,
Where out and in the shifting sunbeams braid
An Indian mat of checquered light and shade, —
The sister seasons in their maze,
Since last we wakened here
From hot siesta the still drowsy year,
Have led the fourfold dance along our quiet ways, —
Autumn apparelled sadly gay,
Winter's white furs and shortened day,
Spring's loitering footstep, quickened at the last,
And half the affluent summer went and came,
As for uncounted years the same —
Ah me! another unreturning spring hath passed.

II.

"When the young die," the Grecian mourner said,
"The springtime from the year hath vanished;"
The gray-haired poet, in unfailing youth,
Sits by the shrine of Truth,
Her oracles to spell,
And their deep meaning tell;
Or else he chants a bird-like note
From that thick-bearded throat
Which warbled forth the songs of smooth-checked May
Beside Youth's sunny fountain all the day;
Sweetly the echoes ring
As in the flush of spring;
At last the poet dies,
The sunny fountain dries, —
The oracles are dumb, no more the wood-birds sing.

III.

Homer forsakes the billowy round
Of sailors circling o'er the island-sea;
Pindar, from Theban fountains and the mound
Builded in love and woe by doomed Antigone,
Must pass beneath the ground;
Stout Æschylus that slew the deep-haired Mede
At Marathon, at Salamis, and freed
Athens from Persian thrall,
Then sung the battle call, —
Must yield to that one foe he could not quell;
In Gela's flowery plain he slumbers well *
Sicilian roses bloom
Above his nameless tomb;
And there the nightingale doth mourn in vain
For Bion, too, who sung the Dorian strain; —
By Arethusa's tide,
His brother swains might flute in Dorian mood, —
The bird of love in thickets of the wood
Sing for a thousand years his grave beside —
Yet Bion still was mute — the Dorian lay had died.

IV.

The Attic poet at approach of age
Laid by his garland, took the staff and scrip,
For singing robes the mantle of the sage, —
And taught gray wisdom with the same grave lip
That once had carolled gay
Where silver flutes breathed soft and festal harps did play;
Young Plato sang of love and beauty's charm,
While he that from Stagira came to hear
In lyric measures bade his princely pupil arm,
And strike the Persian tyrant mute with fear.
High thought doth well accord with melody,
Brave deed with Poesy,
And song is prelude fair to sweet Philosophy.
But wiser English Shakspeare's noble choice,
Poet and sage at once, whose varied voice
Taught beyond Plato's ken, yet charming every ear; —
A kindred choice was his, whose spirit hovers here.

Now Avon glides through Severn to the sea,
And murmurs that her Shakspeare sings no more;
Thames bears the freight of many a tribute shore,
But on those banks her poet bold and free,
That stooped in blindness at his humble door,
Yet never bowed to priest or prince the knee,
Wanders no more by those sad sisters led;
Herbert and Spenser dead
Have left their names alone to him whose scheme
Stiffly endeavors to supplant the dream
Of seer and poet, with mechanic rule
Learned from the chemist's closet, from the surgeon's tool.
With us Philosophy still spreads her wing,
And soars to seek Heaven's King —
Nor creeps through charnels, prying with the glass
That makes the little big, — while gods unseen may pass.

VI.

Along the marge of these slow-gliding streams,
Our winding Concord add the wider flow
Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams
A throng of poets, — tearfully they go;
For each bright river misses from its band
The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel hand, —
They sleep each on his wooded hill above the sorrowing land.
Duly each mound with garlands we adorn
Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn, —
Sadly above them wave
The wailing pine-trees of their native strand;
Sadly the distant billows smite the shore,
Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar;
All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair,
On earth, in sea or air,
Droop and grow silent by the poet's grave.

VII.

Yet wherefore weep? Old age is but a tomb,
A living hearse, slow creeping to the gloom
And utter silence. He from age is freed
Who meets the stroke of Death and rises thence
Victor o'er every woe; his sure defence
Is swift defeat; by that he doth succeed.
Death is the poet's friend — I speak it sooth;
Death shall restore him to his golden youth,
Unlock for him the portal of renown,
And on Fame's tablet write his verses down,
For every age in endless time to read.
With us Death's quarrel is: he takes away
Joy from our eyes — from this dark world the day —
When other skies he opens to the poet's ray.

VIII.

Lonely these meadows green,
Silent these warbling woodlands must appear
To us, by whom our poet-sage was seen
Wandering among their beauties, year by year, —
Listening with delicate ear
To each fine note that fell from tree or sky,
Or rose from earth on high:
Glancing that falcon eye,
In kindly radiance as of some young star,
At all the shows of Nature near and far,
Or on the tame procession plodding by,
Of daily toil and care, — and all life's pageantry;
Then darting forth warm beams of wit and love,
Wide as the sun's great orbit, and as high above
These paths wherein our lowly tasks we ply.

IX.

His was the task and his the lordly gift
Our eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift;
He found us chained in Plato's fabled caves
Our faces long averted from the blaze
Of Heaven's broad light, and idly turned to gaze
On shadows, flitting ceaseless as the wave
That dashes ever idly on some isle enchanted;
By shadows haunted
We sat, — amused in youth, in manhood daunted,
in vacant age forlorn, — then slipped within the grave,
The same dull chain still clasped around our shroud;
These captives, bound and bowed,
He from their dungeon like that angel led
Who softly to imprisoned Peter said,
"Arise up quickly! gird thyself and flee!"
We wist not whose the thrilling voice, we knew our souls were free.

Ah! blest those years of youthful hope,
When every breeze was Zephyr, every morning May!
Then as we bravely climbed the slope
Of life's steep mount, we gained a wider scope
At every stair, and could with joy survey
The track beneath us, and the upward way;
Both lay in light — round both the breath of love
Fragrant and warm from Heaven's own tropic blew;
Beside us what glad comrades smiled and strove!
Beyond us what dim visions rose to view!
With thee, dear Master! through that morning land
We journeyed happy: thine the guiding hand,
Thine the far-looking eye, the dauntless smile;
Thy lofty song of hope did the long march beguile.

XI.

Now scattered wide and lost to loving sight
The gallant train
That heard thy strain;
'Tis May no longer, — shadows of the night
Beset the downward pathway; thou art gone,
And with thee vanished that perpetual dawn
Of which thou wert the harbinger and seer.
Yet courage! comrades, — though no more we hear
Each other's voices, lost within this cloud
That time and chance about our way have cast.
Still his brave music haunts the hearkening ear,
As 'mid bold cliffs and dewy passes of the Past.
Be that our countersign! for chanting loud
His magic song, though far apart we go,
Best shall we thus discern both friend and foe.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

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The Poet's Countersign