The Poets and Poetry of America

EXCELSIOR.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

THE shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village pass'd
A youth, who bore, mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath
Flash'd like a faulchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright: Above, the spectral glaciers shone,

And from his lips escaped a groan,

Excelsior!

Try not the pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answer'd, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine tree's wither'd branch! Beware the awful avalanche !"

This was the peasant's last good-night;
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint BERNARD
Utter'd the oft-repeated prayer,

A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There, in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star!
Excelsior!

THE RAINY DAY.

THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all: Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.

MAIDENHOOD.

MAIDEN! with the meek, brown eyes,
In whose orbs a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies!
Thou, whose locks outshine the sun,
Golden tresses, wreathed in one,
As the braided streamlets run!
Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet!
Womanhood and childhood fleet!
Gazing, with a timid glance,

On the brooklet's swift advance,
On the river's broad expanse!
Deep and still, that gliding stream
Beautiful to thee must seem,
As the river of a dream.
Then, why pause with indecision,
When bright angels in thy vision
Beckon thee to fields Elysian?
Seest thou shadows sailing by,
As the dove, with startled eye,
Sees the falcon's shadow fly?
Hearest thou voices on the shore,
That our ears perceive no more,
Deafen'd by the cataract's roar?

O, thou child of many prayers!
Life hath quicksands,-Life hath snares!
Care and age come unawares!

Like the swell of some sweet tune,
Morning rises into noon,
May glides onward into June.
Childhood is the bough where slumber'd
Birds and blossoms many-number'd;
Age, that bough with snows encumber'd.
Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows,
To embalm that tent of snows.

Bear a lily in thy hand;
Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.

Bear, through sorrow, wrong, and ruth.
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.

O, that dew, like balm, shall steal
Into wounds, that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;
And that smile, like sunshine, dart
Into many a sunless heart,
For a smile of God thou art.

GEORGE LUNT.

[Born about 1807.]

MR. LUNT is a native of the pleasant village DENE of Newburyport, near Boston, from which, for a long period, his ancestors and relatives "followed the sea." He was educated at Cambridge, and soon after leaving the university entered as a student the law-office of the present Chief Justice of Massachusetts. From the time of his admission to the bar he has pursued the practice of his the profession in Newburyport. He has for several years represented the people of that town in the State Senate and House of Assembly, and has held

various other honourable offices.

When he was about nineteen years of age, he

AUTUMN MUSINGS.

COME thou with me! If thou hast worn away
All this most glorious summer in the crowd,
Amid the dust of cities, and the din,
While birds were carolling on every spray;
If, from gray dawn to solemn night's approach,
Thy soul hath wasted all its better thoughts,
Toiling and panting for a little gold;
Drudging amid the very lees of life

For this accursed slave that makes men slaves;
Come thou with me into the pleasant fields:
Let Nature breathe on us and make us free!
For thou shalt hold communion, pure and high,
With the great Spirit of the Universe;
It shall pervade thy soul; it shall renew
The fancies of thy boyhood; thou shalt know
Tears, most unwonted tears dimming thine eyes;
Thou shalt forget, under the old brown oak,
That the good south wind and the liberal west
Have other tidings than the songs of birds,
Or the soft news wafted from fragrant flowers.
Look out on Nature's face, and what hath she
In common with thy feelings? That brown hill,
Upon whose sides, from the gray mountain-ash,
We gather'd crimson berries, look'd as brown
When the leaves fell twelve autumn suns ago;
This pleasant stream, with the well-shaded verge,
On whose fair surface have our buoyant limbs
So often play'd, caressing and caress'd;
Its verdant banks are green as then they were;
So went its bubbling murmur down the tide.
Yes, and the very trees, those ancient oaks,
The crimson-crested maple, feathery elm,
And fair, smooth ash, with leaves of graceful gold,
Look like familiar faces of old friends.

wrote "The Grave of Byron," a poem in the Spenserian measure, which has considerable merit; and, in 1839, appeared a collection of his later productions, of which the largest is a metrical essay entitled "Life," in which he has attempted to show, by reference to the condition of society in different ages, that Christianity is necessary to the development of man's moral nature. More recently he has published "The Age of Gold and other Poems;" "Lyric Poems, Sonnets, and Miscellanies;" and two or three other small volumes, besides "Julia," a satire, and a novel in prose, entitled "Eastford," under the pseudonym of WESLEY BROOKE.

The first soft breeze of spring shall see them fresh
With sprouting twigs bursting from every branch,
As should fresh feelings from our wither'd hearts.
Scorn not the moral; for, while these have warm'd
To annual beauty, gladdening the fields
With new and ever-glorious garniture,
Thou hast grown worn and wasted, almost gray
Even in thy very summer.
"Tis for this

We have neglected nature! Wearing out
Our hearts and all our life's dearest charities
In the perpetual turmoil, when we need
To strengthen and to purify our minds
Amid the venerable woods; to hold

Chaste converse with the fountains and the winds!

So should we elevate our souls; so be
Ready to stand and act a nobler part
In the hard, heartless struggles of the world.

And, sinking on the blue hills' breast, the sun
Day wanes; 't is autumn eventide again;
Spreads the large bounty of his level blaze,
Lengthening the shades of mountains and tall trees,
And throwing blacker shadows o'er the sheet
Of this dark stream, in whose unruffled tide
Waver the bank-shrub and the graceful clm,
As the gay branches and their trembling leaves
Catch the soft whisper of the coming air:
So doth it mirror every passing cloud,
And those which fill the chambers of the west
With such strange beauty, fairer than all thrones,
Blazon'd with orient gems and barbarous gold.
I see thy full heart gathering in thine eyes;
I see those eyes swelling with precious tears;
But, if thou couldst have look'd upon this scene
With a cold brow, and then turn'd back to thoughts
Of traffic in thy fellow's wretchedness,
Thou wert not fit to gaze upon the face
Of Nature's naked beauty; most unfit

From their broad branches drop the wither'd leaves, To look on fairer things, the loveliness

Drop, one by one, without a single breath,
Save when some eddying curl round the old roots
Twirls them about in merry sport a while.
They are not changed; their office is not done;

Of earth's most lovely daughters, whose glad forms
And glancing eyes do kindle the great souls
Of better men to emulate pure thoughts,
And, in high action, all ennobling deeds.

GEORGE LUNT.

But lo! the harvest moon! She climbs as fair Lo, Zebulon comes; he remembers the day

Among the cluster'd jewels of the sky,

As, mid the rosy bowers of paradise,

Her soft light, trembling upon leaf and flower,
Smiled o'er the slumbers of the first-born man.
And, while her beauty is upon our hearts,
Now let us seek our quiet home, that sleep
May come without bad dreams; may come as light
As to that yellow-headed cottage-boy,
Whose serious musings, as he homeward drives
His sober herd, are of the frosty dawn,

And the ripe nuts which his own hand shall pluck.
Then, when the bird, high-courier of the morn,
Looks from his airy vantage over the world,
And, by the music of his mounting flight,
Tells many blessed things of gushing gold,
Coming in floods o'er the eastern wave,
Will we arise, and our pure orisons
Shall keep us in the trials of the day.

JEWISH BATTLE-SONG.

Ho! Princes of Jacob! the strength and the stay
Of the daughter of Zion,-now up, and array;
Lo, the hunters have struck her, and bleeding alone
Like a pard in the desert she maketh her moan:
Up, with war-horse and banner, with spear and
with sword,

On the spoiler go down in the might of the Lord!

She lay sleeping in beauty, more fair than the moon, With her children about her, like stars in night's noon,

When they came to her covert, these spoilers of

Rome,

And are trampling her children and rifling her home:
O, up, noble chiefs! would you leave her forlorn,
To be crush'd by the Gentile, a mock and a scorn?

Their legions and cohorts are fair to behold,
With their iron-clad bosoms, and helmets of gold;
But, gorgeous and glorious in pride though they be,
Their avarice is broad as the grasp of the sea;
They talk not of pity; the mercies they feel
Are cruel and fierce as their death-doing steel.

Will they laugh at the hind they have struck to
the earth,

When the bold stag of Naphtali bursts on their

mirth?

Will they dare to deride and insult, when in wrath
The lion of Judah glares wild in their path?
O, say, will they mock us, when down on the plain
The hoofs of our steeds thunder over their slain?
They come with their plumes tossing haughty and
free,

And white as the crest of the old hoary sea;
Yet they float not so fierce as the wild lion's mane,
To whose lair ye have track'd him, whose whelps

ye have slain;

But, dark mountain-archer! your sinews to-day
Must be strong as the spear-shaft to drive in the prey.
And the tribes are all gathering; the valleys ring out
To the peal of the crumpet-the timbrel-the shout:

When they perill'd their lives to the death in the fray
And the riders of Naphtali burst from the hills
Like a mountain-swollen stream in the pride of
its rills.

Like Sisera's rolls the foe's chariot-wheel,
Like both shall he perish, if ye are but men,
And he comes, like the Philistine, girded in steel;
If your javelins and hearts are as mighty as then
He trusts in his buckler, his spear, and his sword;
His strength is but weakness;-we trust in the
LORD!

"PASS ON, RELENTLESS WORLD."
SWIFTER and Swifter, day by day,

Down Time's unquiet current hurl'd,
Thou passest on thy restless way,

Tumultuous and unstable world!
Thou passest on! Time hath not seen
Delay upon thy hurried path;
And prayers and tears alike have been

In vain to stay thy course of wrath!
Thou passest on, and with thee go

The loves of youth, the cares of age;
And smiles and tears, and joy and wo,
Are on thy history's troubled page!
There, every day, like yesterday,

Writes hopes that end in mockery;
But who shall tear the veil away
Before the abyss of things to be?
Thou passest on, and at thy side,

Even as a shade, Oblivion treads,
And o'er the dreams of human pride
His misty shroud forever spreads;
Where all thine iron hand hath traced
Upon that gloomy scroll to-day,
With records ages since effaced,
Like them shall live, like them decay.
Thou passest on, with thee the vain,

Who sport upon thy flaunting blaze,
Pride, framed of dust and folly's train,
Who court thy love, and run thy ways:
But thou and I,-and be it so,-

Press onward to eternity;
Yet not together let us go

To that deep-voiced but shoreless sea.
Thou hast thy friends,—I would have mine;
Thou hast thy thoughts,-leave me my own;
I kneel not at thy gilded shrine,

I bow not at thy slavish throne;
I see them pass without a sigh,—
They wake no swelling raptures now,
The fierce delights that fire thine eye,
The triumphs of thy haughty brow.
Pass on, relentless world! I grieve
No more for all that thou hast riven,
Pass on, in God's name,-only leave
The things thou never yet hast given-
A heart at ease, a mind at home,

Affections fixed above thy sway,
Faith set upon a world to come,
And patience through life's little day.

HAMPTON BEACH.

AGAIN upon the sounding shore,
And, O how bless'd, again alone!
I could not bear to hear thy roar,
Thy deep, thy long, majestic tone;
I could not bear to think that one

Could view with me thy swelling might,
And, like a very stock or stone,

Turn coldly from the glorious sight,

And seek the idle world, to hate and fear and fight.

Thou art the same, eternal sea!

The earth hath many shapes and forms, Of hill and valley, flower and tree; Fields that the fervid noontide warms, Or winter's rugged grasp deforms, Or bright with autumn's golden store; Thou coverest up thy face with storms, Or smilest serene,-but still thy roar And dashing foam go up to vex the sea-beat shore.

I see thy heaving waters roll, I hear thy stern, uplifted voice, And trumpet-like upon my soul Falls the deep music of that noise Wherewith thou dost thyself rejoice; The ships, that on thy bosom play, Thou dashest them about like toys, And stranded navies are thy prey, Strown on thy rock-bound coast, torn by the whirling spray.

As summer twilight, soft and calm, Or when in stormy grandeur drest, Peals up to heaven the eternal psalm, That swells within thy boundless breast; Thy curling waters have no rest; But day and night the ceaseless throng Of waves that wait thy high behest, Speak out in utterance deep and strong, And loud the craggy beach howls back their

savage song.

Terrible art thou in thy wrath,— Terrible in thine hour of glee, When the strong winds, upon their path, Bound o'er thy breast tumultuously, And shout their chorus loud and free To the sad sea-bird's mournful wail, As, heaving with the heaving sea, The broken mast and shatter'd sail Tell of thy cruel strength the lamentable tale.

Ay, 'tis indeed a glorious sight

То

gaze upon thine ample face;
An awful joy,-a deep delight!
I see thy laughing waves embrace
Each other in their frolic race;

I sit above the flashing spray,
That foams around this rocky base,
And, as the bright blue waters play,
Feel that my thoughts, my life, perchance, are vain
[as they.

This is thy lesson, mighty sea!
Man calls the dimpled earth his own,
The flowery vale, the golden lea;
And on the wild, gray mountain-stone
Claims nature's temple for his throne!

But where thy many voices sing

Their endless song, the deep, deep tone Calls back his spirit's airy wing,

He shrinks into himself, where God alone is king!

PILGRIM SONG.

OVER the mountain wave, see where they come; Storm-cloud and wintry wind welcome them home; Yet, where the sounding gale howls to the sea, There their song peals along, deep-toned and free: Pilgrims and wanderers, hither we come ;

Where the free dare to be-this is our home!" England hath sunny dales, dearly they bloom; Scotia hath heather-hills, sweet their perfume: Yet through the wilderness cheerful we stray, Native land, native land-home far away!

"Pilgrims and wanderers, hither we come; Where the free dare to be-this is our home!" Dim grew the forest-path: onward they trod; Firm beat their noble hearts, trusting in GoD! Gray men and blooming maids, high rose their song; Hear it sweep, clear and deep, ever along :

THE LYRE AND SWORD.

THE freeman's glittering sword be blest,-
Forever blest the freeman's lyre,—
That rings upon the tyrant's crest;

This stirs the heart like living fire:
Well can he wield the shining brand,
Who battles for his native land;

But when his fingers sweep the chords,
That summon heroes to the fray,
They gather at the feast of swords,

Like mountain-eagles to their prey!
And mid the vales and swelling hills,
That sweetly bloom in Freedom's land,
A living spirit breathes and fills

The freeman's heart and nerves his hand; For the bright soil that gave him birth, The home of all he loves on earth,

For this, when Freedom's trumpet calls, He waves on high his sword of fire,For this, amidst his country's halls Forever strikes the freeman's lyre! His burning heart he may not lend

To serve a doting despot's sway,— A suppliant knee he will not bend,

Before these things of "brass and clay :" When wrong and ruin call to war, He knows the summons from afar; On high his glittering sword he waves, And myriads feel the freeman's fire, While he, around their fathers' graves, Strikes to old strains the freeman's lyre!

ROBERT H. MESSINGER.

[Born about 1807.]

OUR cleverest writers of verse, in many cases, have never collected the waifs they have given to magazines and newspapers, and some of the best fugitive pieces thus published have a periodical currency without the endorsement of a name, or their authors, having written for the love of writing, rather than for reputation, have permitted whoever would to run away with the literary honors to which they were entitled. Mr. MESSINGER is an example of this class.

ROBERT HINCKLEY MESSINGER is a native of Boston, and comes from an old puritan and pilgrim stock, being a descendant in the seventh generation from HENRY MESSINGER, who was made a freeman of Boston in the year 1630, and a great grandson of the Reverend HENRY MESSINGER, who was graduated at Harvard College in 1719, and elected the first minister of Wrentham, Massachusetts, in 1720.

With a view to his education at Cambridge he

was placed at the Boston Latin School, then under the administration of BENJAMIN A. GOULD; but after three years' attendance there, preferring met cantile pursuits, he left for the city of New York, from his pen were mostly written at about the age} where he resided many years. The poems we have of twenty to twenty-five years, and appeared in the New York "American." The lines, "Give me the Old," suggested by a famous saying of paper for the twenty-sixth of April, 1838, and were ALPHONSO of Castile, were first published in that reprinted in an early edition of the "Poets and Poetry of America," under an impression that they were from the hand of the ingenious and elegant essayist, Mr. HENRY CARY; out that gentleman, on discovering my error, took the first opportunity to deny their authorship to me.

Mr. MESSINGER's residence at present (1855) is in New London, one of the mountain villages of New Hampshire.

III.

Old books to read!-
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasp'd, the vellum writ,
Time-honour'd tomes!

The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,
The well-earn'd meed

Of Oxford's domes:
Old HOMER blind,

Old HORACE, rake ANACREON, by
Old TULLY, PLAUTUS, TERENCE lie;
Mort ARTHUR's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint BURTON, quainter SPENSER, ay,
And GERVASE MARKHAM's venerie-
Nor leave behind

The Holye Book by which we live and die.

"It is rather a sad commentary on the last verse, to know that the WALTER good,' the 'soulful FRED,' and the 'learned WILL,' are in their graves."-Note from the aw thor, dated March 9, 1855, in the "Home Journal."

« Previous Continue »

Books