Books: Pike County Ballads and Other Poems
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John Hay >> Pike County Ballads and Other Poems
I stand and watch with clouded eyes
These dim battalions move along;
Out of the distance memory cries
Of days when life and hope were strong,
When love was prompt and wit was gay;
Even then, at evening, as to-day,
I watched, while twilight hovered dim
Over Potomac's curving rim,
This selfsame flight of homing crows
Blotting the sunset's fading rose,
Above the roofs of Washington.
REMORSE.
Sad is the thought of sunniest days
Of love and rapture perished,
And shine through memory's tearful haze
The eyes once fondliest cherished.
Reproachful is the ghost of toys
That charmed while life was wasted.
But saddest is the thought of joys
That never yet were tasted.
Sad is the vague and tender dream
Of dead love's lingering kisses,
To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam
Of unreturning blisses;
Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride
For the pitiless death that won them, -
But the saddest wail is for lips that died
With the virgin dew upon them.
ESSE QUAM VIDERI.
The knightly legend of thy shield betrays
The moral of thy life; a forecast wise,
And that large honour that deceit defies,
Inspired thy fathers in the elder days,
Who decked thy scutcheon with that sturdy phrase,
TO BE RATHER THAN SEEM. As eve's red skies
Surpass the morning's rosy prophecies,
Thy life to that proud boast its answer pays.
Scorning thy faith and purpose to defend
The ever-mutable multitude at last
Will hail the power they did not comprehend, -
Thy fame will broaden through the centuries;
As, storm and billowy tumult overpast,
The moon rules calmly o'er the conquered seas.
WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.
There's a happy time coming,
When the boys come home.
There's a glorious day coming,
When the boys come home.
We will end the dreadful story
Of this treason dark and gory
In a sunburst of glory,
When the boys come home.
The day will seem brighter
When the boys come home,
For our hearts will be lighter
When the boys come home.
Wives and sweethearts will press them
In their arms and caress them,
And pray God to bless them,
When the boys come home.
The thinned ranks will be proudest
When the boys come home,
And their cheer will ring the loudest
When the boys come home.
The full ranks will be shattered,
And the bright arms will be battered,
And the battle-standards tattered,
When the boys come home.
Their bayonets may be rusty,
When the boys come home,
And their uniforms dusty,
When the boys come home.
But all shall see the traces
Of battle's royal graces,
In the brown and bearded faces,
When the boys come home.
Our love shall go to meet them,
When the boys come home,
To bless them and to greet them,
When the boys come home;
And the fame of their endeavour
Time and change shall not dissever
From the nation's heart for ever,
When the boys come home.
LESE-AMOUR.
How well my heart remembers
Beside these camp-fire embers
The eyes that smiled so far away, -
The joy that was November's.
Her voice to laughter moving,
So merrily reproving, -
We wandered through the autumn woods,
And neither thought of loving.
The hills with light were glowing,
The waves in joy were flowing, -
It was not to the clouded sun
The day's delight was owing.
Though through the brown leaves straying,
Our lives seemed gone a-Maying;
We knew not Love was with us there,
No look nor tone betraying.
How unbelief still misses
The best of being's blisses!
Our parting saw the first and last
Of love's imagined kisses.
Now 'mid these scenes the drearest
I dream of her, the dearest, -
Whose eyes outshine the Southern stars,
So far, and yet the nearest.
And Love, so gaily taunted,
Who died, no welcome granted,
Comes to me now, a pallid ghost,
By whom my life is haunted.
With bonds I may not sever,
He binds my heart for ever,
And leads me where we murdered him, -
The Hill beside the River.
CAMP SHAW, FLORIDA,
February 1864.
NORTHWARD.
Under the high unclouded sun
That makes the ship and shadow one,
I sail away as from the fort
Booms sullenly the noonday gun.
The odorous airs blow thin and fine,
The sparkling waves like emeralds shine,
The lustre of the coral reefs
Gleams whitely through the tepid brine.
And glitters o'er the liquid miles
The jewelled ring of verdant isles,
Where generous Nature holds her court
Of ripened bloom and sunny smiles.
Encinctured by the faithful seas
Inviolate gardens load the breeze,
Where flaunt like giant-warders' plumes
The pennants of the cocoa-trees.
Enthroned in light and bathed in balm,
In lonely majesty the Palm
Blesses the isles with waving hands, -
High-Priest of the eternal Calm.
Yet Northward with an equal mind
I steer my course, and leave behind
The rapture of the Southern skies, -
The wooing of the Southern wind.
For here o'er Nature's wanton bloom
Falls far and near the shade of gloom,
Cast from the hovering vulture-wings
Of one dark thought of woe and doom.
I know that in the snow-white pines
The brave Norse fire of freedom shines,
And fain for this I leave the land
Where endless summer pranks the vines.
O strong, free North, so wise and brave!
O South, too lovely for a slave!
Why read ye not the changeless truth, -
The free can conquer but to save?
May God upon these shining sands
Send Love and Victory clasping hands,
And Freedom's banners wave in peace
For ever o'er the rescued lands!
And here, in that triumphant hour,
Shall yielding beauty wed with power;
And blushing earth and smiling sea
In dalliance deck the bridal bower.
KEY WEST, 1864.
IN THE FIRELIGHT.
My dear wife sits beside the fire
With folded hands and dreaming eyes,
Watching the restless flames aspire,
And rapt in thralling memories.
I mark the fitful firelight fling
Its warm caresses on her brow,
And kiss her hands' unmelting snow,
And glisten on her wedding-ring.
The proud free head that crowns so well
The neck superb, whose outlines glide
Into the bosom's perfect swell
Soft-billowed by its peaceful tide,
The cheek's faint flush, the lip's red glow,
The gracious charm her beauty wears,
Fill my fond eyes with tender tears
As in the days of long ago.
Days long ago, when in her eyes
The only heaven I cared for lay,
When from our thoughtless Paradise
All care and toil dwelt far away;
When Hope in wayward fancies throve,
And rioted in secret sweets,
Beguiled by Passion's dear deceits, -
The mysteries of maiden love.
One year had passed since first my sight
Was gladdened by her girlish charms,
When on a rapturous summer night
I clasped her in possessing arms.
And now ten years have rolled away,
And left such blessings as their dower;
I owe her tenfold at this hour
The love that lit our wedding-day.
For now, vague-hovering o'er her form,
My fancy sees, by love refined,
A warmer and a dearer charm
By wedlock's mystic hands entwined, -
A golden coil of wifely cares
That years have forged, the loving joy
That guards the curly-headed boy
Asleep an hour ago upstairs.
A fair young mother, pure as fair,
A matron heart and virgin soul!
The flickering light that crowns her hair
Seems like a saintly aureole.
A tender sense upon me falls
That joy unmerited is mine,
And in this pleasant twilight shine
My perfect bliss myself appals.
Come back! my darling, strayed so far
Into the realm of fantasy, -
Let thy dear face shine like a star
In love-light beaming over me.
My melting soul is jealous, sweet,
Of thy long silence' drear eclipse;
O kiss me back with living lips,
To life, love, lying at thy feet!
IN A GRAVEYARD.
In the dewy depths of the graveyard
I lie in the tangled grass,
And watch, in the sea of azure,
The white cloud-islands pass.
The birds in the rustling branches
Sing gaily overhead;
Grey stones like sentinel spectres
Are guarding the silent dead.
The early flowers sleep shaded
In the cool green noonday glooms;
The broken light falls shuddering
On the cold white face of the tombs.
Without, the world is smiling
In the infinite love of God,
But the sunlight fails and falters
When it falls on the churchyard sod.
On me the joyous rapture
Of a heart's first love is shed,
But it falls on my heart as coldly
As sunlight on the dead.
THE PRAIRIE.
The skies are blue above my head,
The prairie green below,
And flickering o'er the tufted grass
The shifting shadows go,
Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds
Fleck white the tranquil skies,
Black javelins darting where aloft
The whirring pheasant flies.
A glimmering plain in drowsy trance
The dim horizon bounds,
Where all the air is resonant
With sleepy summer sounds, -
The life that sings among the flowers,
The lisping of the breeze,
The hot cicala's sultry cry,
The murmurous dream of bees.
The butterfly--a flying flower -
Wheels swift in flashing rings,
And flutters round his quiet kin,
With brave flame-mottled wings.
The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire
The Phlox' bright clusters shine,
And Prairie-Cups are swinging free
To spill their airy wine.
And lavishly beneath the sun,
In liberal splendour rolled,
The Fennel fills the dipping plain
With floods of flowery gold;
And widely weaves the Iron-Weed
A woof of purple dyes
Where Autumn's royal feet may tread
When bankrupt Summer flies.
In verdurous tumult far away
The prairie-billows gleam,
Upon their crests in blessing rests
The noontide's gracious beam.
Low quivering vapours steaming dim
The level splendours break
Where languid Lilies deck the rim
Of some land-circled lake.
Far in the east like low-hung clouds
The waving woodlands lie;
Far in the west the glowing plain
Melts warmly in the sky.
No accent wounds the reverent air,
No footprint dints the sod,
Lone in the light the prairie lies
Rapt in a dream of God.
ILLINOIS, 1858.
CENTENNIAL.
A hundred times the bells of Brown
Have rung to sleep the idle summers,
And still to-day clangs clamouring down
A greeting to the welcome comers.
And far, like waves of morning, pours
Her call, in airy ripples breaking,
And wanders to the farthest shores,
Her children's drowsy hearts awaking.
The wild vibration floats along,
O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying,
And wakes in every breast its song
Of love and gratitude undying.
My heart to meet the summons leaps
At limit of its straining tether,
Where the fresh western sunlight steeps
In golden flame the prairie heather.
And others, happier, rise and fare
To pass within the hallowed portal,
And see the glory shining there
Shrined in her steadfast eyes immortal.
What though their eyes be dim and dull,
Their heads be white in reverend blossom;
Our mothers smile is beautiful
As when she bore them on her bosom!
Her heavenly forehead bears no line
Of Time's iconolastic fingers,
But o'er her form the grace divine
Of deathless youth and wisdom lingers.
We fade and pass, grow faint and old,
Till youth and joy and hope are banished,
And still her beauty seems to fold
The sum of all the glory vanished.
As while Tithonus faltered on
The threshold of the Olympian dawnings,
Aurora's front eternal shone
With lustre of the myriad mornings.
So joys that slip like dead leaves down,
And hopes burnt out that die in ashes,
Rise restless from their graves to crown
Our mother's brow with fadeless flashes.
And lives wrapped in traditions mist
These honoured halls to-day are haunting,
And lips by lips long withered kissed
The sagas of the past are chanting.
Scornful of absence' envious bar
BROWN smiles upon the mystic meeting
Of those her sons, who, sundered far,
In brotherhood of heart are greeting;
Her wayward children wandering on
Where setting stars are lowly burning,
But still in worship toward the dawn
That gilds their souls' dear Mecca turning;
Or those who, armed for God's own fight,
Stand by His Word through fire and slaughter,
Or bear our banner's starry light
Far-flashing through the Gulf's blue water.
For where one strikes for light and truth,
The right to aid, the wrong redressing,
The mother of his spirit's youth
Sheds o'er his soul her silent blessing.
She gained her crown a gem of flame
When KNEASS fell dead in victory gory;
New splendour blazed upon her name
When IVES' young life went out in glory!
Thus bright for ever may she keep
Her fires of tolerant Freedom burning,
Till War's red eyes are charmed to sleep
And bells ring home the boys returning.
And may she shed her radiant truth
In largess on ingenuous comers,
And hold the bloom of gracious youth
Through many a hundred tranquil summers!
A WINTER NIGHT.
The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill,
And chides with angry moan the frosty skies;
The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes
That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still.
We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill,
Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies,
Lured by the hand of beckoning memories,
Back to those summer evenings on the hill
Where we together watched the sun go down
Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires
Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires
Piercing the purpling mists that veiled the town.
The wintry night thy voice and eyes beguile,
Till wake the sleeping summers in thy smile.
STUDENT-SONG.
When Youth's warm heart beats high, my friend,
And Youth's blue sky is bright,
And shines in Youth's clear eye, my friend,
Love's early dawning light,
Let the free soul spurn care's control,
And while the glad days shine,
We'll use their beams for Youth's gay dreams
Of Love and Song and Wine.
Let not the bigot's frown, my friend,
O'ercast thy brow with gloom,
For Autumn's sober brown, my friend,
Shall follow Summer's bloom.
Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes
In changeful beauty shine,
And shed their beams on Youth's gay dreams
Of Love and Song and Wine.
For in the weary years, my friend,
That stretched before us lie,
There'll be enough of tears, my friend,
To dim the brightest eye.
So let them wait, and laugh at fate,
While Youth's sweet moments shine, -
Till memory gleams with golden dreams
Of Love and Song and Wine.
HOW IT HAPPENED.
I pray you, pardon me, Elsie,
And smile that frown away
That dims the light of your lovely face
As a thunder-cloud the day.
I really could not help it, -
Before I thought, 'twas done, -
And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold,
Like an icicle in the sun.
I was thinking of the summers
When we were boys and girls,
And wandered in the blossoming woods,
And the gay winds romped with your curls.
And you seemed to me the same little girl
I kissed in the alder-path,
I kissed the little girl's lips, and, alas!
I have roused a woman's wrath.
There is not so much to pardon, -
For why were your lips so red?
The blond hair fell in a shower of gold
From the proud, provoking head.
And the beauty that flashed from the splendid eyes,
And played round the tender mouth,
Rushed over my soul like a warm sweet wind
That blows from the fragrant south.
And where, after all, is the harm done?
I believe we were made to be gay,
And all of youth not given to love
Is vainly squandered away.
And strewn through life's low labours,
Like gold in the desert sands,
Are love's swift kisses and sighs and vows
And the clasp of clinging hands.
And when you are old and lonely,
In Memory's magic shine
You will see on your thin and wasting hands,
Like gems, these kisses of mine.
And when you muse at evening
At the sound of some vanished name,
The ghost of my kisses shall touch your lips
And kindle your heart to flame.
GOD'S VENGEANCE.
Saith the Lord, "Vengeance is mine;
I will repay," saith the Lord;
Ours be the anger divine,
Lit by the flash of His word.
How shall His vengeance be done?
How, when His purpose is clear?
Must He come down from His throne?
Hath He no instruments here?
Sleep not in imbecile trust,
Waiting for God to begin,
While, growing strong in the dust,
Rests the bruised serpent of sin.
Right and Wrong,--both cannot live
Death-grappled. Which shall we see?
Strike! only Justice can give
Safety to all that shall be.
Shame! to stand paltering thus,
Tricked by the balancing odds;
Strike! God is waiting for us!
Strike! for the vengeance is God's.
TOO LATE.
Had we but met in other days,
Had we but loved in other ways,
Another light and hope had shone
On your life and my own.
In sweet but hopeless reveries
I fancy how your wistful eyes
Had saved me, had I known their power
In fate's imperious hour;
How loving you, beloved of God,
And following you, the path I trod
Had led me, through your love and prayers,
To God's love unawares:
And how our beings joined as one
Had passed through checkered shade and sun,
Until the earth our lives had given,
With little change, to heaven.
God knows why this was not to be.
You bloomed from childhood far from me.
The sunshine of the favoured place
That knew your youth and grace.
And when your eyes, so fair and free,
In fearless beauty beamed on me,
I knew the fatal die was thrown,
My choice in life was gone.
And still with wild and tender art
Your child-love touched my torpid heart,
Gilding the blackness where it fell,
Like sunlight over hell.
In vain, in vain! my choice was gone!
Better to struggle on alone
Than blot your pure life's blameless shine
With cloudy stains of mine.
A vague regret, a troubled prayer,
And then the future vast and fair
Will tempt your young and eager eyes
With all its glad surprise.
And I shall watch you, safe and far,
As some late traveller eyes a star
Wheeling beyond his desert sands
To gladden happier lands.
LOVE'S DOUBT.
'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes, -
I sometimes say in doubting dreams, -
The face that near me perfect seems
Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes.
'Twas but love's dazzled eyes--I say -
That made her seem so strangely bright;
The face I worshipped yesternight,
I dread to meet it changed to-day.
As, when dies out some song's refrain,
And leaves your eyes in happy tears,
Awake the same fond idle fears, -
It cannot sound so sweet again.
You wait and say with vague annoy,
"It will not sound so sweet again,"
Until comes back the wild refrain
That floods your soul with treble joy.
So when I see my love again
Fades the unquiet doubt away,
While shines her beauty like the day
Over my happy heart and brain.
And in that face I see no more
The fancied faults I idly dreamed,
But all the charms that fairest seemed,
I find them, fairer than before.
LAGRIMAS.
God send me tears!
Loose the fierce band that binds my tired brain,
Give me the melting heart of other years,
And let me weep again!
Before me pass
The shapes of things inexorably true.
Gone is the sparkle of transforming dew
From every blade of grass.
In life's high noon
Aimless I stand, my promised task undone,
And raise my hot eyes to the angry sun
That will go down too soon.
Turned into gall
Are the sweet joys of childhood's sunny reign;
And memory is a torture, love a chain
That binds my life in thrall.
And childhood's pain
Could to me now the purest rapture yield;
I pray for tears as in his parching field
The husbandman for rain.
We pray in vain!
The sullen sky flings down its blaze of brass;
The joys of life all scorched and withering pass;
I shall not weep again.
ON THE BLUFF.
O grandly flowing River!
O silver-gliding River!
Thy springing willows shiver
In the sunset as of old;
They shiver in the silence
Of the willow-whitened islands,
While the sun-bars and the sand-bars
Fill air and wave with gold.
O gay, oblivious River!
O sunset-kindled River!
Do you remember ever
The eyes and skies so blue
On a summer day that shone here,
When we were all alone here,
And the blue eyes were too wise
To speak the love they knew?
O stern, impassive River!
O still, unanswering River!
The shivering willows quiver
As the night-winds moan and rave.
From the past a voice is calling,
From heaven a star is falling,
And dew swells in the bluebells
Above her hillside grave.
UNA.
In the whole wide world there was but one;
Others for others, but she was mine,
The one fair woman beneath the sun.
From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine
Down to the lithe and delicate feet
There was not a curve nor a waving line
But moved in a harmony firm and sweet
With all of passion my life could know.
By knowledge perfect and faith complete
I was bound to her,--as the planets go
Adoring around their central star,
Free, but united for weal or woe.
She was so near and Heaven so far -
She grew my heaven and law and fate,
Rounding my life with a mystic bar
No thought beyond could violate.
Our love to fulness in silence nursed
Grew calm as morning, when through the gate
Of the glimmering east the sun has burst,
With his hot life filling the waiting air.
She kissed me once,--that last and first
Of her maiden kisses was placid as prayer.
Against all comers I sat with lance
In rest, and, drunk with my joy, I sware
Defiance and scorn to the world's worst chance.
In vain! for soon unhorsed I lay
At the feet of the strong god Circumstance -
And never again shall break the day,
And never again shall fall the night,
That shall light me, or shield me, on my way
To the presence of my sad soul's delight.
Her dead love comes like a passionate ghost
To mourn the Body it held so light,
And Fate, like a hound with a purpose lost,
Goes round bewildered with shame and fright.
THROUGH THE LONG DAYS.
Through the long days and years
What will my loved one be,
Parted from me?
Through the long days and years.
Always as then she was,
Loveliest, brightest, best,
Blessing and blest, -
Always as then she was.
Never on earth again
Shall I before her stand,
Touch lip or hand, -
Never on earth again.
But while my darling lives
Peaceful I journey on,
Not quite alone,
Not while my darling lives.
A PHYLACTERY.
Wise men I hold those rakes of old
Who, as we read in antique story,
When lyres were struck and wine was poured,
Set the white Death's Head on the board -
Memento mori.
Love well! love truly! and love fast!
True love evades the dilatory.
Life's bloom flares like a meteor past;
A joy so dazzling cannot last -
Memento mori.
Stop not to pluck the leaves of bay
That greenly deck the path of glory,
The wreath will wither if you stay,
So pass along your earnest way -
Memento mori.
Hear but not heed, though wild and shrill,
The cries of faction transitory;
Cleave to YOUR good, eschew YOUR ill,
A Hundred Years and all is still -
Memento mori.
When Old Age comes with muffled drums,
That beat to sleep our tired life's story,
On thoughts of dying (Rest is good!),
Like old snakes coiled i' the sun, we brood -
Memento mori.
BLONDINE.
I wandered through a careless world
Deceived when not deceiving,
And never gave an idle heart
The rapture of believing.
The smiles, the sighs, the glancing eyes,
Of many hundred comers
Swept by me, light as rose-leaves blown
From long-forgotten summers.
But never eyes so deep and bright
And loyal in their seeming,
And never smiles so full of light
Have shone upon my dreaming.
The looks and lips so gay and wise,
The thousand charms that wreathe them,
--Almost I dare believe that truth
Is safely shrined beneath them.
Ah! do they shine, those eyes of thine,
But for our own misleading?
The fresh young smile, so pure and fine,
Does it but mock our reading?
Then faith is fled, and trust is dead,
And unbelief grows duty,
If fraud can wield the triple arm
Of youth and wit and beauty.
DISTICHES.
I.
Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her.
This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not.
II.
There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going,
When they seem going they come: Diplomates, women, and crabs.
III.
Pleasures too hastily tasted grow sweeter in fond recollection,
As the pomegranate plucked green ripens far over the sea.
IV.
As the meek beasts in the Garden came flocking for Adam to name them,
Men for a title to-day crawl to the feet of a king.
V.
What is a first love worth, except to prepare for a second?
What does the second love bring? Only regret for the first.
VI.
Health was wooed by the Romans in groves of the laurel and myrtle.
Happy and long are the lives brightened by glory and love.
VII.
Wine is like rain: when it falls on the mire it but makes it the fouler,
But when it strikes the good soil wakes it to beauty and bloom.
VIII.
Break not the rose; its fragrance and beauty are surely sufficient:
Resting contented with these, never a thorn shall you feel.
IX.
When you break up housekeeping, you learn the extent of your treasures;
Till he begins to reform, no one can number his sins.