Textarchiv - Christopher Pearse Cranch

A Child-savior

mrbot — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 21:10:02 +0000

She stood beside the iron road,
A little child of ten years old.
She heard two meeting thunders rolled
From north and south, that plainly showed
Danger too fearful to be told.

Nearer, still nearer, rumbling on,
One train approached with crashing speed.
What could she do? Who would give heed
To her — a child, who stood alone
And voiceless as a roadside weed?

A feeble cry she raised, and stood
Across the track, — and then untied
Her little apron from her side,
And waved it swiftly as she could —
If only she might be espied!

If only on the hissing back
Of that huge monster nearing fast
The engineer his eye might cast
On her there on the curving track,
And heed her signal ere he passed!

She stands with shout and warning beck;
On comes the train with thundering roar.
The fireman sees — he looks once more —
He sees a little waving speck,
And slackening, slower moves and slower.

"Hi — little girl! what's all this row?"
"Another train! — my ears it stuns!
It rounds the curve like rattling guns!
Back — back! — for I must signal now
The other." And away she runs.

So by this little maiden's hand
Were hundreds saved from fearful lot.
But when with awe they spoke of what
They had escaped, and made demand
About the child, they found her not.

For she had vanished through the wood.
None guessed her dwelling-place or name,
Nor by what wondrous chance she came;
While home she ran in blithesome mood,
Nor knew she had done a deed of fame.

But in the old times they would have said
It was an angel had stood there —
The hood above her golden hair
A nimbus glowing round a head
With supernatural radiance fair.

The small white apron that she waved
Across the dangerous iron track
To warn the rushing engines back,
Might have been wings, whose flashing saved
Five hundred souls from mortal wrack.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

Venice

mrbot — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 21:10:01 +0000

While the skies of this northern November
Scowl down with a darkening menace,
I wonder if you still remember
That marvellous summer in Venice.

When the mornings by clouds unencumbered
Smiled on in unchanging persistence
On the broad bright laguna that slumbered
Afar in the magical distance.

And the mirror of waters reflected
The sails in their gay plumage grouping
Like tropical birds that erected
Their wings, or sat drowsily drooping.

How by moonlight our gondola gliding
Through gleams and through shadows of wonder,
With its sharp flashing beak flew dividing
The waves slipping silently under.

Then almost too full seemed the chalice
Of new brimming life and of beauty,
As we floated by Riva and palace,
Dogana and stately Salute —

Through deep-mouthed canals overshaded
By balconies gray, quaint and olden,
Where ruins of centuries faded
Stood stripped of their azure and golden.

Do you call back the days when before us
The masters of art shone revealing
Their marvels of color — and o'er us
Glowed grand on the rich massy ceiling

In the halls of the doges, where trembled
The state in its turbulent fever,
And purple-robed senates assembled
In days that are shadows forever?

You remember the yellow light tipping
The domes when the sunset was dying;
The crowds on the quays, and the shipping;
The pennons and flags that were flying; —

Saint Mark's with its mellow-toned glory,
The splendor and gloom of its riches;
The columns Byzantine and hoary;
The arches, the gold-crusted niches;

And the days when the sunshine invited
The painters abroad, until mooring
Their bark in the shadow, delighted
They wrought at their labors alluring;

The pictures receding in stretches
Of amber and opal around us —
The joy of our mornings of sketches —
The spell of achievement that bound us?

Ah, never I busy my brushes
With scenes of that radiant weather,
But through me the memory rushes
When we were in Venice together.

Fair Venice, the pearl-shell of cities!
Though poor the oblations we bring her —
The pictures, the songs and the ditties —
Ah, still we must paint her and sing her!

A vision of beauty long vanished,
A dream that is joy to remember,
A solace that cannot be banished
By all the chill blasts of November!

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

Rosamond

mrbot — Mon, 25 Dec 2017 21:10:07 +0000

In the fragrant bright June morning, Rosamond, the queen of girls,
Down the marble doorsteps loiters, radiant with her sunny curls;
O'er the green sward through the garden passes to the river's brink —
Throws away an old bouquet, and wonders if 't will float or sink.
Then returning through the garden, round and round the lawn she goes,
Singing, as she cuts fresh roses, she herself her world's fair rose;
In her dainty morning-robe and straw hat shading half her face —
Picturesque in form and feature, lovely in her youth and grace;
In her hand a little dagger, sharp and glittering in the sun,
Rifling hearts of thorny bushes, cutting roses one by one,
Pink and white and blood-red crimson — some in bud and some full-blown,
There through lawn and grove and garden sings she to herself alone;
Softly sings in broken snatches some old song of Spain or France,
As she holds her roses off at full arm's length, with sidelong glance,
Shifting groups of forms and colors; for a painter's eye hath she,
And all beauty pleaseth her, so artist-like and fancy-free.

Now she enters her boudoir and sets her roses in a vase.
There for seven days and nights their bloom and fragrance fill the place.
When the petals droop and fade, she'll bear them to the river's brink;
Singing, throw them on the waves, and wonder if they'll float or sink.

Will she bear away to-night a bunch of lovers' rose-hearts, pray?
Set them in her vase a week — then throw them with her flowers away?

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

Ralph Waldo Emerson

mrbot — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 21:10:02 +0000

Out of the cloud that dimmed his sunset light,
Into the unknown firmament withdrawn
Beyond the mists and shadows of the night,
We mourn the friend and teacher who has gone.

As in the days of old when Plato freed
The Athenian youths into a heavenlier sphere,
Long will the age with reverence hear and heed
The sweet deep music of our poet-seer.

For to his eye all objects and events
Spoke a symbolic language; and his mind
Pierced with the poet's vision through the dense
Dull surface to the larger truth behind.

And yet no solitary mystic trained
To spin a metaphysic web was he;
But open-eyed to all that life contained,
And the broad earth, of living harmony.

Nature adopted him from boyhood's hour.
The pines, the elms, the willows knew him well.
The lonely streams where blushed the cardinal-flower,
And where the shy Rhodora's petals fell.

And well his mother's lore he loved and learned;
His master-hand her crudest stuff refined.
All that she gave he back to her returned
Woven with figures of the shaping mind.

It seemed as if the hill-tops where he met
The sunrise still the livery put on
Of nobler days, and never could forget
The Syrian splendors of the poet's dawn.

And books to him unfolded all their store;
What soul was in them he had eyes to see.
And past and present turned up golden ore,
Transmuted by his mind's fine alchemy.

He drew his circles of so wide a sweep
That they encompassed every sect and creed.
Beneath the thought which seemed to others deep
His swifter spirit dived with brilliant speed.

His keen, clear intuition knit the threads
Of truths disjoined in one symmetric whole;
And barren wayside weeds and scattered shreds
Of facts found mystic meanings in his soul.

He dared to ope the windows to the breeze
Of Nature, when sectarians shuddering frowned,
While through the close air of their cloistered ease
The leaves of creeds fell fluttering to the ground;

Yet lived to see harsh theologians change
From blind mistrust to love the truth he taught;
And shallow wits grow dumb beneath his range
Of brilliant apothegm and daring thought.

Choice words and images like Shakspeare's best
Dropped from his lips and waited on his pen.
His voice in tuneful eloquence expressed
The manliest minds of Plutarch's noblest men.

For him our Western world its keen, dry lore
Recorded with a stenographic hand,
While the far Orient climes for tribute bore
The scriptures old of many a pagan land.

He saw the Soul whose breath all being breathes; —
The Life that glows in atoms and in suns;
The Law that binds; the Beauty that enwreathes;
The Ideal that all mortal wit outruns.

Yet close to earth and common duties bound,
Pledged to all true and gracious tasks he stood.
His presence made a sunshine all around,
His daily life a bond of brotherhood.

He needed not to worship at a shrine
Purer than private hours might well approve.
His missal was illumed with thoughts divine,
His rosary strung with kindly deeds of love.

Yet love and justice were at one with him;
And on the base oppressor's brow the stain
And brand were laid, not in derision grim,
But sad and fateful as the mark of Cain.

Thus, true as needle to the polar star,
He espoused the righteous cause, rebuked the wrong,
And flashed chivalric 'gainst a nation's bar
Of precedent, though fixed and sanctioned long.

Poet and sage! thy lofty muse demands
An insight deeper than the times attain.
Across the stagnant pools and drifting sands
Of thought I see thee like a sacred fane

Rise sunlit in the broad expanse of time;
And young and old shall greet from far thy light,
And pilgrims turn from many an old-world clime
To hail thy star-like dome of stainless white.

The wise will know thee, and the good will love.
The age to come will feel thy impress given
In all that lifts the race a step above
Itself, and stamps it with the seal of heaven.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

Summer Dawn

mrbot — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 21:10:06 +0000

Some summer mornings — when you've taken tea
Too late the night before — perhaps you'll see,
If at some Berkshire farmhouse far away
You chance to wake while yet the sky is gray,
A glory, to your landscape-painter men
Unknown, yet worthy of a poet's pen.

Look from your window. Long gray banks of cloud
The fields, the hills, the distant view enshroud.
Faint stars still glimmer in the heavens above.
Below dim shapes of fog o'er stream and grove
Hang wreathing, shifting in the sluggish breeze.
Are yonder shadows mist or mist-clad trees?
For what is cloud and what is land no eye
(Sleepy at least like yours) can yet descry.
And now the rushing streams, by day unheard,
You hear, and now the twitter of a bird,
And now another, till at last the hills
And woods are all alive with fugues and trills.
The sheep begin to bleat, the cows to low;
Three hoarse, young roosters try their best to crow,
Responding to some thirsty, quacking duck,
Or hen who folds her chicks with motherly cluck.

Now morning spreads apace. The stars are drowned.
Trees loom above the fog; and all around
The landscape is transfigured in the light
Of pearly skies. Westward the wings of Night
Are folded as she steals unseen away.
Now in the far northeast an amber gray
Gleams under bars of long dark-pencilled cloud.
The crows above the woods are cawing loud.
Brighter and brighter up the dewy slope
The coming sunrise floods the lands with hope.
The clouds from north to south begin to blush.
Old Graylock answers with a rosy flush.
One mountain peak looms up with crimsoned sides;
A moment more, and in the mist it hides.
And now the valleys catch the sun below,
And elms and barn-rods redden in the glow.

O for a pencil rapid as the light
To paint the glories bursting on the sight!
Making the plain New England landscape seem
The unfamiliar scenery of a dream.
For this might be in Arcady — my rhyme
Some Eastern shepherd's of the olden time.
Here might I pipe with Tityrus in the grove;
Here to fair Amaryllis whisper love;
Here the wild woodland haunts of Dryads seek —
But what is that! The locomotive's shriek
Calls me from Dreamland and the Arcadian dawn.
The sun is up. The mystery is gone.
Another book of poesy the West
Has opened. Let the bards of old go rest.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

My Studio

mrbot — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:10:02 +0000

I love it, yet I hardly can tell why —
My studio with its window to the sky,
Far up above the noises of the street,
The rumbling carts, the ceaseless tramp of feet;
A privacy secure from idle crowds,
And public only to the flying clouds.
No shadowed corners round about me hide.
Clear-lighted stand its walls on every side,
Each sketch and picture showing at its best.
A room for cheery work that needs no rest.
Only too short these days of autumn seem,
Where labor is but joy and peace supreme;
Where fields and woods, towns, skies, and winding rills
Still haunt the memory as the canvas fills.
And while the painter plies his earnest task,
He seems as in some vision-land to bask;
And all that fed his eye and fired his soul
When in the golden summer days lie stole
Their forms and colors, now lived o'er again,
Runs like a strain of music through his brain.
O joyous tasks of art! without your spell
Life were a dull and dreary cloister-cell,
All nature darkened and all beauty dim.
But ye fill up its chalice to the brim
With draughts as sweet as ever yet, I ween,
Flowed in the poets' sparkling Hippocrene.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

Sea Pictures

mrbot — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 21:10:02 +0000

I.
Morning.
The morning sun has pierced the mist,
And beach and cliff and ocean kissed.
Blue as the lapis-lazuli
The sea reflects the azure sky.
In the salt healthy breeze I stand
Upon the solid floor of sand.
Along the untrodden shore are seen
Fresh tufts of weed maroon and green,
And ruffled kelp and stranded sticks
And shells and stones and sea-moss mix.
The low black rocks, forever wet,
Lie tangled in their pulpy net.
The shy sand-pipers fly and light —
And swallows circle out of sight.
Out where the sky the horizon meets
Glide glimmering sails in scattered fleets.
Old Ocean smiles as though amid
His leagues of brine no treachery hid.
And safe upon the sandy marge,
By stranded boat and floating barge,
Gay children leap and laugh and run,
Browned by the salt air and the sun.

II.
Evening.
Now thickening twilight presses down
Upon the harbor and the town,
And all around a misty pall
Of dull gray cloud hangs over all.
The huddling fishing-sloops lie safe,
While far away the breakers chafe.
And now the landsman's straining eye
Mingles the gray sea with the sky.
Far out upon the darkening deep
The white ghosts of the ocean leap.
Boone Island's light, a lonely star,
Is flashing o'er the waves afar.
Up the broad beach the sea rolls in
In never-ending foam and din;
And all along the craggy shore
Resounds one long continuous roar.
We turn away, and hail each gleam
Where lamps from cottage windows stream.
For sad and solemn is the moan
Of ocean when the day has flown,
And, borne on dusky wings, the night
Wraps in a shroud the dying light.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

After-life

mrbot — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 21:10:03 +0000

O boon and curse in one — this ceaseless need
Of looking still behind us and before!
Gift to the soul of eyes that cannot read
Life's open book of cabalistic lore; —

Eyes that discern a light and joy divine
Twinkling beyond the twilight clouds afar,
Yet know not if it be the countersign
Of moods and thoughts, or some eternal star.

What taunt of destiny still stimulates
Yet baffles all desire, or wise or fond,
To pierce the veil ne'er lifted by the fates
Between the life that ends and life beyond?

We sit before the doors of death, and dream
That when they ope to let our brothers in,
We catch, before they close, some flitting gleam
Of glory where their after-lives begin.

And with the light a transient burst of song
Comes from within the gates that shut again
Upon our dead. Then we, the proud, the strong,
Sit crushed and lonely in our wordless pain.

Weeping, we knock against the bars, and call,
"Speak — speak, O love, for we are left alone!"
We hear our voices echo against the wall,
And dream it is a spirit's answering tone.

"Come back, or answer us!"
In vain we cry.
Naught is so near as death, so far away
As life beyond. They only know who die:
And we who live can only guess and pray.

If 't were indeed a voice not born within —
Some sure authentic sign from unknown realms —
Some note that heart and reason both could win —
Some carol like yon oriole in the elms;

Though but a vague and broken music caught,
Heard in the darkness, and then heard no more —
Sinking in sudden silence — while in thought
We piece the strains outside the muffled door

That leads into the light and perfect joy
Of the full concert — then 't were bliss indeed
No present griefs could darken or destroy;
Somewhere life's mystery we should learn to read.

Somewhere we then might drop the ripened seed
Of life, to grow again beyond the sky —
Nor deem the human soul a withering weed
Born but to bloom a summer time and die.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

Longfellow

mrbot — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:10:06 +0000

Across the sea the swift sad message darts
And beats with sudden pang against our hearts.
Under the elm-trees in his homestead old
The Laureate of our land lies dead and cold;
Wept by the love of friends, and crowned with fame;
Revered by youth and age, his well-known name
Caught in fast-circling whispers, sad and low,
In streets where noisy crowds move too and fro —
"Can it be true that he is dead — is dead?"
Life seemed to love that noble, silvery head,
And youth still lingered in the kindly eyes
Now closed, alas, to all beneath the skies!

No more across the fields by Charles's stream
Those eyes shall see their well-loved landscape gleam.
No more the treasured books upon his shelves
Suggest the visions rarer than themselves.
No friends around his hospitable fire
Hear the last touches of his graceful lyre.

The coming spring will flush with purple bloom
His lilacs, and waft in their sweet perfume;
His roses unregarded drop away;
Unheard the oriole's warble through the day;
Unmarked the bees' low hum from flower to flower,
The dial's shade, the sunshine and the shower.
Yet from the garden of his thoughts and deeds
Still will his poems fly like winged seeds.
And far and wide, through city, plain and hill,
Borne to a thousand firesides, bloom and fill
The people's hearts, and touch to issues fine
Of aspiration human and divine.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887

To Ione

mrbot — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:43:17 +0000

All day within me, sweet and clear
The song you sang is ringing.
At night in my half-dreaming ear
I hear you singing, singing.

Ere thought takes up its homespun thread
When early morn is breaking,
Sweet snatches hover round my bed
And cheer me when awaking.

The sunrise brings the melody
I only half remember,
And summer seems to smile for me,
Although it is December.

Through drifting snow, through dropping rain,
Through gusts of wind, it haunts me.
The tantalizing old refrain
Perplexes, yet enchants me.

The mystic chords that bore along
Your voice so calmly splendid,
In glimmering fragments with the song
Are joined and vaguely blended.

I touch my instrument and grope
Along the keys' confusion,
And dally with the chords in hopes
To catch the sweet illusion.

In vain of that consummate hour
I court the full completeness,
The perfume of the hidden flower,
The perfect bloom and sweetness.

Of strains that were too rich to last
A baffled memory lingers.
The theme, the air, the chords have passed;
They mock my voice and fingers.

They steal away as sunset fires
Lose one by one their flashes,
And cheat the eye with smouldering pyres
And banks of gray cloud-ashes.

And yet I know the old alloy
That dims and disentrances
The golden visions and the joy
Of hope's resplendent fancies

Can never touch that festal hour
In soul and sense recorded,
Though scattered rose leaves from your bower
Alone my search rewarded.

The unconnected strains alone
Survive to bring you nearer,
As when our queen of song and tone
Made vassals of each hearer.

Yet through the night and through the day
The notes and chords are ringing.
Their echo will not pass away —
I hear you singing — singing.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

1887