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Edmund Clarence Stedman (Эдмунд Кларенс Стедман) Dartmouth Ode I PRELUDE A wind and a voice from the North! A courier-wind sent forth From the mountains to the sea: A summons borne to me From halls which the Muses haunt, from hills where the heart and the wind are free! "Come from the outer throng!" (Such was the burden it bore,) "Thou who hast gone before, Hither! and sing us a song, Far from the round of the town and the sound of the great world's roar!" O masterful voice of Youth, That will have, like the upland wind, its own wild way! O choral words, that with every season rise Like the warblings of orchard-birds at break of day! O faces, fresh with the light of morning skies! No marvel world-worn toilers seek you here, Even as they life renew, from year to year, In woods and meadows lit with blossoming May; But O, blithe voices, that have such sweet power, Unto your high behest this summer hour What answer has the poet? how shall he frame his lay? II THEME "What shall my song rehearse?" I said To a wise bard, whose hoary head Is bowed, like Kearsarge crouching low Beneath a winter weight of snow, But whose songs of passion, joy, or scorn, Within a fiery heart are born. "What can I spread, what proper feast For these young Magi of the East? What wisdom find, what mystic lore, What chant they have not heard before? Strange words of old has every tongue Those happy cloistered hills among; For each riddle I divine They can answer me with nine; Their footsteps by the Muse are led, Their lips on Plato's honey fed; Their eyes have skill to read the page Of Theban bard or Attic sage; For them all Nature's mysteries,— The deep-down secrets of the seas, The cyclone's whirl, the lightning's shock, The language of the riven rock; They know the starry sisters seven,— What clouds the molten suns enfold, And all the golden woof of heaven Unravelled in their lens behold! Gazing in a thousand eyes, So rapt and clear, so wonder-wise, What shall my language picture, then, Beyond their wont—that has not reached their ken? "What else are poets used to sing, Who sing of youth, than laurelled fame and love? But ah! it needs no words to move Young hearts to some impassioned vow, To whom already on the wing The blind god hastens. Even now Their pulses quiver with a thrill Than all that wisdom wiser still. Nor any need to tell of rustling bays, Of honor ever at the victor's hand, To them who at the portals stand Like mettled steeds,—each eager from control To leap, and, where the corso lies ablaze, Let out his speed and soonest pass the goal. "What is there left? what shall my verse Within those ancient halls rehearse?" Deep in his heart my plaint the minstrel weighed, And a subtle answer made: "The world that is, the ways of men, Not yet are glassed within their ken. Their foster-mother holds them long,— Long, long to youth,—short, short to age, appear The rounds of her Olympic Year,— Their ears are quickened for the trumpet-call. Sing to them one true song, Ere from the Happy Vale they turn, Of all the Abyssinian craved to learn, And dared his fate, and scaled the mountain-wall To join the ranks without, and meet what might befall." III VESTIGIA RETRORSUM Gone the Arcadian age, When, from his hillside hermitage Sent forth, the gentle scholar strode At ease upon a royal road, And found the outer regions all they seem In Youth's prophetic dream. The graduate took his station then By right, a ruler among men: Courtly the three estates, and sure; The bar, the bench, the pulpit, pure; No cosmic doubts arose, to vex The preacher's heart, his faith perplex. Content in ancient paths he trod, Nor searched beyond his Book for God. Great virtue lurked in many a saw And in the doctor's Latin lay; Men thought, lived, died, in the appointed way. Yet eloquence was slave to law, And law to right: the statesman sought A patriot's fame, and served his land, unbought, And bore erect his front, and held his oath in awe. IV ÆREA PROLES But, now, far other days Have made less green the poet's bays,— Have less revered the band and gown, The grave physician's learnèd frown,— Shaken the penitential mind That read the text nor looked behind,— Brought from his throne the bookman down, Made hard the road to station and renown! Now from this seclusion deep The scholar wakes,—as one from sleep, As one from sleep remote and sweet, In some fragrant garden-close Between the lily and the rose, Roused by the tramp of many feet, Leaps up to find a ruthless, warring band, Dust, strife, an untried weapon in his hand! The time unto itself is strange, Driven on from change to change, Neither of past nor present sure, The ideal vanished nor the real secure. Heaven has faded from the skies, Faith hides apart and weeps with clouded eyes; A noise of cries we hear, a noise of creeds, While the old heroic deeds Not of the leaders now are told, as then, But of lowly, common men. See by what paths the loud-voiced gain Their little heights above the plain: Truth, honor, virtue, cast away For the poor plaudits of a day! Now fashion guides at will The artists brush, the writer's quill, While, for a weary time unknown, The reverent workman toils alone, Asking for bread and given but a stone. Fettered with gold the statesman's tongue; Now, even the church, among New doubts and strange discoveries, half in vain Defends her long, ancestral reign; Now, than all others grown more great, That which was the last estate By turns reflects and rules the age,— Laughs, scolds, weeps, counsels, jeers,—a jester and sage! V ENCHANTMENTS Here in Learning's shaded haunt, The battle-fugue and mingled cries forlorn Softened to music seem, nor the clear spirit daunt; Here, in the gracious world that looks From earth and sky and books, Easeful and sweet it seems all else to scorn Than works of noble use and virtue born; Brave hope and high ambition consecrate Our coming years to something great. But when the man has stood, Anon, in garish outer light, Feeling the first wild fever of the blood That places self with self at strife Whether to hoard or drain the wine of life,— When the broad pageant flares upon the sight, And tuneful Pleasure plumes her wing And the crowds jostle and the mad bells ring,— Then he, who sees the vain world take slow heed Albeit of his worthiest and best, And still, through years of failure and unrest, Would keep inviolate his vow, Of all his faith and valor has sore need! Even then, I know, do nobly as we will, What we would not, we do, and see not how; That which we would, is not, we know not why; Some fortune holds us from our purpose still,— Chance sternly beats us back, and turns our steps awry! VI YOUTH AND AGE How slow, how sure, how swift, The sands within each glass, The brief, illusive moments, pass! Half unawares we mark their drift Till the awakened heart cries out,—Alas! Alas, the fair occasion fled, The precious chance to action all unwed! And murmurs in its depths the old refrain,— Had we but known betimes what now we know in vain! When the veil from the eyes is lifted The seer's head is gray; When the sailor to shore has drifted The sirens are far away. Why must the clearer vision, The wisdom of Life's late hour, Come, as in Fate's derision, When the hand has lost its power? Is there a rarer being, Is there a fairer sphere Where the strong are not unseeing, And the harvests are not sere; Where, ere the season's dwindle They yield their due return; Where the lamps of knowledge kindle While the flames of youth still burn? O for the young man's chances! O for the old man's will! Those flee while this advances, And the strong years cheat us still. VII WHAT CHEER? Is there naught else?—you say,— No braver prospect far away? No gladder song, no ringing call Beyond the misty mountain-wall? And were it thus indeed, I know Your hearts would still with courage glow; I know how yon historic stream Is laden yet, as in the past, With dreamful longings on it cast, By those who saunter from the crown Of this broad slope, their reverend Academe,— Who reach the meadowed banks, and lay them down On the green sward, and set their faces south, Embarked in Fancy's shallop there, And with the current seek the river's mouth, Finding the outer ocean grand and fair. Ay, like a stream's perpetual tide, Wave after wave each blithe, successive throng Must join the main and wander far and wide. To you the golden, vanward years belong! Ye need not fear to leave the shore: Not seldom youth has shamed the sage With riper wisdom,—but to age Youth, youth, returns no more! Be yours the strength by will to conquer fate, Since to the man who sees his purpose clear, And gains that knowledge of his sphere Within which lies all happiness,— Without, all danger and distress,— And seeks the right, content to strive and wait, To him all good things flow, nor honor crowns him late. VIII PHAROS One such there was, that brother elder-born And loftiest,—from your household torn In the rathe spring-time, ere His steps could seek their olden pathways here. Mourn! Mourn, for your Mother mourns, of him bereft,— Her strong one! he is fallen: But has left His works your heritage and guide, Through East and West his stalwart fame divide. Mourn, for the liberal youth, The undaunted spirit whose quintessence rare, Fanned by the Norseland air, Saw flaming in its own white heat the truth That Man, whate'er his ancestry, Tanned by what sun or exiled from what shore, Hears in his soul the high command,—Be Free! For him who, at the parting of the ways, Disdained the flowery path, and gave His succor to the hunted Afric slave, Whose cause he chose nor feared the world's dispraise; Yet found anon the right become the might, And, in the long revenge of time, Lived to renown and hoary years sublime. Ye know him now, your beacon-light! Ay, he was fronted like a tower,— In thought large-moulded, as of frame; He that, in the supreme hour, Sat brooding at the river-heads of power With sovereign strength for every need that came! Not for that blameless one the place That opens wide to men of lesser race;— Even as of old the votes are given, And Aristides is from Athens driven; But for our statesmen, in his grander trust No less the undefiled, The Just,— With poesy and learning lightly worn, And knees that bent to Heaven night and morn,— For him that sacred, unimpassioned seat, Where right and wrong for stainless judgment meet Above the greed, the strife, the party call.— Henceforth let Chase's robes on no base shoulders fall! IX ATLANTIS SURGENS Well may your hearts be valiant,—ye who stand Within that glory from the past, And see how ripe the time, how fair the land In which your lot is cast! For us alone your sorrow, Ye children of the morrow,— For us, who struggle yet, and wait, Sent forth too early and too late! But yours shall be our tenure handed down, Conveyed in blood, stamped with the martyr's crown; For which the toilers long have wrought, And poets sung, and heroes fought; The new Saturnian age is yours, That juster season soon to be On the near coasts (whereto your vessels sail Beyond the darkness and the gale), Of proud Atlantis risen from the sea! You shall not know the pain that now endures The surge, the smiting of the waves, The overhanging thunder, The shades of night which plunge engulfed under Those yawning island-caves; But in their stead for you shall glisten soon The coral circlet and the still lagoon, Green shores of freedom, blest with calms, And sunlit streams and meads, and shadowy palms: Such joys await you, in our sorrows' stead; Thither our charts have almost led; Nor in that land shall worth, truth, courage, ask for alms. X VALETE ET SALVETE O, trained beneath the Northern Star! Worth, courage, honor, these indeed Your sustenance and birthright are! Now, from her sweet dominion freed, Your Foster Mother bids you speed; Her gracious hands the gates unbar, Her richest gifts you bear away, Her memories shall be your stay: Go where you will, her eyes your course shall mark afar. June 25, 1873 Edmund Clarence Stedman's other poems:
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