The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics Part 33

In a still room at hush of dawn, My Love and I lay side by side And heard the roaming forest wind Stir in the paling autumn-tide.

I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad Because the round day was so fair; While memories of reluctant night Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.

Outside, a yellow maple-tree, s.h.i.+fting upon the silvery blue With small innumerable sound, Rustled to let the sunlight through.

The livelong day the elvish leaves Danced with their shadows on the floor; And the lost children of the wind Went straying homeward by our door.

And all the swarthy afternoon We watched the great deliberate sun Walk through the crimsoned hazy world, Counting his hilltops one by one.

Then as the purple twilight came And touched the vines along our eaves, Another Shadow stood without And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.

The silence fell on my Love's lips; Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad With pondering some maze of dream, Though all the splendid year was glad.

Restless and vague as a gray wind Her heart had grown, she knew not why.

But hurrying to the open door, Against the verge of western sky

I saw retreating on the hills, Looming and sinister and black, The stealthy figure swift and huge Of One who strode and looked not back.

B. CARMAN.

Sesostris.

Sole Lord of Lords and very King of Kings, He sits within the desert, carved in stone; Inscrutable, colossal, and alone, And ancienter than memory of things.

Graved on his front the sacred beetle clings; Disdain sits on his lips; and in a frown Scorn lives upon his forehead for a crown.

The affrighted ostrich dare not dust her wings Anear this Presence. The long caravan's Dazed camels stop, and mute the Bedouins stare.

This symbol of past power more than man's Presages doom. Kings look--and Kings despair: Their sceptres tremble in their jewelled hands And dark thrones totter in the baleful air!

L. MIFFLIN.

NOTES.

American poetry before Bryant was considerable in amount, but, with few exceptions, it must be looked for by the curious student in the graveyard of old anthologies. Who now reads "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America," "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America," "The Day of Doom," "M'Fingal," or "The Columbiad?" Skipping a generation from Barlow's death, who reads with much seriousness any one of the group of poets of which Bryant in his earliest period was the centre: Halleck, Pierpont, Sprague, Drake, Dana, Percival, Allston, Brainard, Mrs.

Osgood, and Miss Brooks? A few of them, to be sure, are remembered by an occasional lyric,--Halleck by "Marco Bozzaris," a spirited ode in the manner of Campbell; Pierpont by his ringing lines, "Warren's Address to the American Soldiers;" Drake by "The American Flag," conventional but not commonplace, and marked by one very imaginative line; and Allston by two rather excellent lyrics, "Rosalie" and "America to Great Britain."

The first poet to accomplish work of high sustained excellence was Bryant. His poetry, though never impa.s.sioned, is uniformly elegant. It is often as chaste as Landor at his best. But it never surprises; it is not emotional, personal, suggestively imaginative. In fact, Bryant's muse is not lyrical. With the exception of Pinkney and Hoffman, whose "Sparkling and Bright," if technically defective, is a true song, we must wait for our lyric poet till we reach Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest--one inclines to say the only--master of musical quality in verse whom America has produced.

_The Wild Honeysuckle._--Philip Freneau, born in 1752, was a soldier in the American Revolution. Though never rising quite into the highest cla.s.s of poets, he is our first genuine singer. "The Indian Burying-ground" and "To a Honey-bee" are only less successful than the graceful lines quoted.

_A Health._--Poe was an enthusiastic admirer of this poem. He p.r.o.nounced it, in his essay ent.i.tled "The Poetic Principle," "full of brilliancy and spirit," and added: "It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinkney to have been born too far south. Had he been a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters, in conducting the thing called _The North American Review_."

This pa.s.sage, very characteristic of Poe's criticisms, ill.u.s.trates both his champions.h.i.+p of favorites, and unmerciful scourging of foes.

_Unseen Spirits._--The earnest sincerity, evident in every line of this poem, removes it at once from the company of those gay society verses sparkling with conceits which won for Willis the satiric comment of Lowell in "A Fable for Critics:"

"There is Willis, all natty, and jaunty, and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em; Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,-- Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!"

Had Willis written more such lyrics as "Unseen Spirits," his fame could hardly have proved so ephemeral. Poe considered this poem Willis's best, and I see no ground for calling the critic's judgment in question.

_To Helen._--This brief lyric, written in the poet's youth, is not only among the most exquisite from his pen, but it furnishes one of the most famous among current quotations:

"The glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome."

_On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake._--These manly lines have yielded another phrase to the world's memory. Hardly any quotation is more hackneyed than the last two verses of the first stanza. Drake was a young poet, the intimate friend and literary co-laborer of Halleck, who died September, 1820, in his twenty-fifth year.

_To the Fringed Gentian._--This lyric well ill.u.s.trates what Mr. Stedman has aptly termed Bryant's "Doric simplicity." Nothing of Wordsworth's is freer from ornament or from the least trace of affectation.

_The Raven._--Though not belonging to the highest order of poetry, "The Raven" still maintains its position at the head of its cla.s.s. No more astonis.h.i.+ng _tour de force_ can be found in English literature.

_Nature._--Generally regarded, I think, the finest of Longfellow's, if not of American, sonnets.

_Ichabod._--Occasioned by the defection and fall of Daniel Webster. It is worthy a place by the side of Browning's "Lost Leader." In later years, Whittier wrote a poem on the theme, which, while not a retraction of his former position, is penned in a tenderer, more tolerant mood, "The Lost Occasion" is its t.i.tle, and it is only just to the poet to read this second lyric, hardly less successful, in connection with the first.

_Old Ironsides._--"Old Ironsides" was the popular name for the frigate _Const.i.tution_. Dr. Holmes's poem appeared in the Boston _Advertiser_ "at the time when it was proposed to break up the old s.h.i.+p as unfit for service."

_Bedouin Song._--One of the most spirited, most genuinely lyrical of American poems.

_Skipper Ireson's Ride._--These lines have an easy, swinging quality that is quite inimitable. One inclines to agree with Mr. Stedman: "Of all our poets he (Whittier) is the most natural balladist."

_The Village Blacksmith._--The directness and homely strength of "The Village Blacksmith" have made it deservedly popular. One questions whether the last stanza might not have been omitted with advantage both to the unity and force of the poem.

_The Last Leaf._--This masterpiece of mingled humor and pathos was a favorite poem of Abraham Lincoln.

_The Old Kentucky Home._--The sincere and tender sentiment of this song, no less than its popular melody, has made it for many years a favorite. Even better known is Foster's "Old Folks at Home," which is said to have had a larger sale than any other American song.

_Carolina._--The concluding lines of this lyric have an imaginative vigor rare in American poetry. Four stanzas are omitted.

_Dirge for a Soldier._--Boker's Dirge was written in memory of General Philip Kearney.

_Battle-hymn of the Republic._--Written in December, 1861, while Mrs.

Howe was on a visit to Was.h.i.+ngton. Soon after the writer's return to Boston the lines were accepted for publication in the _Atlantic Monthly_ by James T. Fields, who suggested the t.i.tle of the poem. The song did not at first receive much notice, but before the Civil War was over had become very popular.

_My Maryland._--A poem of great strength and beauty, though of uneven merit. It is unfortunately marred by a few rather intemperate expressions. The sincerity of feeling is everywhere so evident, however, that these must be forgiven. The lines were written by a native of Baltimore, Prof. James Randall, and were first published in April, 1861.

The author of the famous song was teaching in a Louisiana college when he read in a New Orleans paper the news of the attack on the Ma.s.sachusetts troops as they pa.s.sed through Baltimore. This newspaper account inspired the verses.

_In the Hospital._--This poem, which has enjoyed at best a newspaper immortality, deserves to be more widely known. Its simplicity, directness, and truth of feeling are quite beyond praise. According to a story which one dislikes to believe apocryphal, these lines were found under the pillow of a wounded soldier near Port Royal, South Carolina, in 1864.

_Days._--Regarded from the point of view of artistic form, perhaps nothing of Emerson's is quite so flawless as "Days," a poem which for conciseness and polish is worthy to be called cla.s.sic.

_A Death-bed._--This is a worthy companion-piece to that other miniature cla.s.sic, Thomas Hood's song, beginning, "We watched her breathing through the night."

_Telling the Bees._--"A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. The ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home." This poem of Whittier's is almost his highest achievement.

Lowell said, in writing of the Quaker poet (Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, VI.): "Many of his poems (such for example as 'Telling the Bees'), in which description and sentiment mutually inspire each other, are as fine as any in the language." I often think, however, that Whittier will live longest by his hymns and poems of purely religious devotion. I know of nothing similar in English that surpa.s.ses "The Eternal Goodness," and perhaps half a dozen other poems.