Family

Beautiful Mother, I have toiled all day;
        And I am wearied. And the day is done.
        Now, while the wild brooks run
Soft by the furrows--fading, gold to gray,
    Their laughters turned to musing--ah, let me
    Hide here my face at thine unheeding knee,
        Beautiful Mother; if I be thy son.

The birds fly low. Gulls, starlings, hoverers,
        Along the meadows and the paling foam,
        All wings of thine that roam
Fly down, fly down. One reedy murmur blurs
    The silence of the earth; and from the warm
    Face of the field the upward savors swarm
        Into the darkness. And the herds are home.

All they are stalled and folded for their rest,
        The creatures: cloud-fleece young that leap and veer;
        Mad-mane and...

    England, father and mother in one,
    Look on your stalwart son.
Sturdy and strong, with the valour of youth,
Where is another so lusty?
Coated and mailed, with the armour of truth,
Where is another so trusty?
Flesh of your flesh, and bone of your bone,
He is yours alone.

    England, father and mother in one,
    See the wealth of your son.
Forests primeval, and virginal sod,
Wheat-fields golden and splendid:
Riches of nature and opulent God
For the use of his children intended.
A courage that dares, and a hope that endures,
And a soul all yours.

    England, father and mother in one,
    Hear the cry of your son.
Little cares he for the glories of earth
Lying around and above him,
Yearning is he for the rights of his birt...

Does pleasant spring return once more?
Does earth her happy youth regain?
Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er;
Soft brooklets burst their icy chain:
Upon the blue translucent river
Laughs down an all-unclouded day,
The winged west winds gently quiver,
The buds are bursting from the spray;
While birds are blithe on every tree;
The Oread from the mountain-shore
Sighs, "Lo! thy flowers come back to thee
Thy child, sad mother, comes no more!"

Alas! how long an age it seems
Since all the earth I wandered over,
And vainly, Titan, tasked thy beams
The loved the lost one to discover!
Though all may seek yet none can call
Her tender presence back to me
The sun, with eyes detecting all,
Is blind one vanished form to see.
Hast thou, O Zeus! ...

Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned;
But not from them our fathers chose
The village burying-ground.

The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart;
With scanty grace from Nature’s hand,
And none from that of Art.

A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Without the wall a birch-tree shows
Its drooped and tasselled head;
Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.

There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain
Like white ghosts come and go,
The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
The cow-bell tinkles slow.

Low moans the river from its bed,
The distant pines re...

Yellow leaves, how fast they flutter - woodland hollows thickly strewing,
    Where the wan October sunbeams scantly in the mid-day win,
While the dim gray clouds are drifting, and in saddened hues imbuing
        All without and all within!

All within! but winds of autumn, little Henry, round their dwelling
    Did not load your father's spirit with those deep and burdened sighs; -
Only echoed thoughts of sadness, in your mother's bosom swelling,
        Fast as tears that dim her eyes.

Life is fraught with many changes, checked with sorrow and mutation,
    But no grief it ever lightened such a truth before to know: -
I behold them - father, mother - as they seem to contemplation,
    Only three short weeks ago!

Saddened for the morrow's parting - up the stair...

O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
“Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!”
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,
O welcome guest, though unexpected here:
Who bidst me honour with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.
I will obey, not willingly alone,
But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my re...

        The ordered intermingling
            of the real and the dream,--
        The mill above the river,
            and the mist above the stream;
        The life of ceaseless labor,
            brave with song and cheery call--
        The radiant skies of evening,
            with its rainbow o'er us all.


        AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE!--Is this
            her presence here with me,
        Or but a vain creation of
            a lover's memory?

        A fair, illusive vision
            that would vanish into air
        Dared I even touch the silence
            with the whisper of a prayer?

        Nay, let me then believe in all
            the blended false a...

My mother's kiss, my mother's kiss,
    I feel its impress now;
As in the bright and happy days
    She pressed it on my brow.

You say it is a fancied thing
    Within my memory fraught;
To me it has a sacred place -
    The treasure house of thought.

Again, I feel her fingers glide
    Amid my clustering hair;
I see the love-light in her eyes,
    When all my life was fair.

Again, I hear her gentle voice
    In warning or in love.
How precious was the faith that taught
    My soul of things above.

The music of her voice is stilled,
    Her lips are paled in death.
As precious pearls I'll clasp her words
    Until my latest breath.

The world has scattered round my path
    Honor and wealth and fame;
B...

A son of elder sons I am,
Whose boyhood days were cramped and scant,
Through ages of domestic sham
And family lies and family cant.
Come, elder brothers mine, and bring
Dull loads of care that you have won,
And gather round me while I sing
The ballad of the elder son.

’Twas Christ who spake in parables,
To picture man was his intent;
A simple tale He simply tells,
And He Himself makes no comment.
A morbid sympathy is felt
For prodigals, the selfish ones,
The crooked world has ever dealt
Unjustly by the elder sons.

The elder son on barren soil,
Where life is crude and lands are new,
Must share the father’s hardest toil,
And share the father’s troubles too.
With no child-thoughts to meet his own
His childhood is a lonely one:...

It is a pity and a shame - alas! alas! I know it is,
To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been, so it is;
The purple vintage long is past, with ripened clusters bursting so
They filled the wine-vats to the brim,-'t is strange you will be thirsting so!

Too well our faithful memory tells what might be rhymed or sung about,
For all have sighed and some have wept since last year's snows were flung about;
The beacon flame that fired the sky, the modest ray that gladdened us,
A little breath has quenched their light, and deepening shades have saddened us.

No more our brother's life is ours for cheering or for grieving us,
One only sadness they bequeathed, the sorrow of their leaving us;
Farewell! Farewell! - I turn the leaf I read my chiming measure in;
Who knows but...

With a copy of "The Supernaturalism Of New England."


Dear Sister! while the wise and sage
Turn coldly from my playful page,
And count it strange that ripened age
Should stoop to boyhood's folly;
I know that thou wilt judge aright
Of all which makes the heart more light,
Or lends one star-gleam to the night
Of clouded Melancholy.

Away with weary cares and themes!
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams!
Leave free once more the land which teems
With wonders and romances
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes,
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies
Beneath the quaintly masking guise
Of wild and wizard fancies.

Lo! once again our feet we set
On still green wood-paths, twilight wet,
By lonely brooks, whose waters fret

"Perhaps it is foolish to remark it, but there are times and places when I am a child at those things"
--MACKENZIE.

Each scene of youth to me's a pleasing toy,
Which memory, like a lover, doats upon;
And mix'd with them I am again a boy,
With tears and sighs regretting pleasures gone.

Ah! with enthusiast excesses wild
The scenes of childhood meet my moist'ning eye,
And with the very weakness of a child
I feel the raptures of delights gone by.

And still I fancy, as around I stroll
Each boyish scene, to mark the sport and game,
Others are living with a self-like soul,
That think, and love such trifles, just the same.

An old familiar spot I witness here,
With young companions where we oft have met:
Tho' since we play'd 'tis bleach'd with m...

("Enfants! Oh! revenez!")

[XXII, April, 1837]


Children, come back - come back, I say -
You whom my folly chased away
A moment since, from this my room,
With bristling wrath and words of doom!
What had you done, you bandits small,
With lips as red as roses all?
What crime? - what wild and hapless deed?
What porcelain vase by you was split
To thousand pieces? Did you need
For pastime, as you handled it,
Some Gothic missal to enrich
With your designs fantastical?
Or did your tearing fingers fall
On some old picture? Which, oh, which
Your dreadful fault? Not one of these;
Only when left yourselves to please
This morning but a moment here
'Mid papers tinted by my mind
You took some embryo verses near -
Half formed, ...

I come, ye little noisy Crew,
Not long your pastime to prevent;
I heard the blessing which to you
Our common Friend and Father sent.
I kissed his cheek before he died;
And when his breath was fled,
I raised, while kneeling by his side,
His hand:, it dropped like lead.
Your hands, dear Little-ones, do all
That can be done, will never fall
Like his till they are dead.
By night or day blow foul or fair,
Ne'er will the best of all your train
Play with the locks of his white hair,
Or stand between his knees again.
Here did he sit confined for hours;
But he could see the woods and plains,
Could hear the wind and mark the showers
Come streaming down the streaming panes.
Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound
He rests a prisoner of the ground....

Kindly and warm and tender,
He nestled each childish palm
So close in his own that his touch was a prayer
And his speech a blessed psalm.

He has turned from the marvelous pages
Of many an alien tome -
Haply come down from Olivet,
Or out from the gates of Rome -

Set sail o'er the seas between him
And each little beckoning hand
That fluttered about in the meadows
And groves of his native land, -

Fluttered and flashed on his vision
As, in the glimmering light
Of the orchard-lands of childhood,
The blossoms of pink and white.

And there have been sobs in his bosom,
As out on the shores he stept,
And many a little welcomer
Has wondered why he wept. -

That was because, O children,
Ye might not always be
The ...

From the door of the homestead the mother looks forth,
With a glance half of hope, half of fear,
For the clock in the corner now points to the hour
When the children she loves should appear.
For have they not promised, whatever betide,
On this their dear mother's birthday,
To gather once more round the family board,
Their dutiful service to pay?

From the East and the West, from the North and the South,
In communion and intercourse sweet,
Her children have come, on this festival day,
To sit, as of old, at her feet.
And our mother,-- God bless her benevolent face!--
How her heart thrills with motherly joys,
As she stands at the portal, with arms opened wide,
To welcome her girls and her boys.

And yet, when the first joyful greetings are o'er,
Wh...

As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me...

They have left you, little Henry, but they have not left you lonely -
    Brothers' hearts so knit together could not, might not separate dwell.
Fain to seek you in the mansions far away - One lingered only
    To bid those behind farewell!

Gentle Boy! - His childlike nature in most guileless form was moulded,
    And it may be that his spirit woke in glory unaware,
Since so calmly he resigned it, with his hands still meekly folded,
    Having said his evening prayer.

Or - if conscious of that summons - "Speak, O Lord, Thy servant heareth" -
    As one said, whose name they gave him, might his willing answer be,
"Here am I" - like him replying - "At Thy gates my soul appeareth,
    For behold Thou calledst me!"

A deep silence - utter silence, on his earthly home...