| |
| I SAT one evening in my room, | |
| In that sweet hour of twilight | |
| When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom, | |
| Throng through the spirit’s skylight; | |
| The flames by fits curled round the bars, | 5 |
| Or up the chimney crinkled, | |
| While embers dropped like falling stars, | |
| And in the ashes tinkled. | |
| |
| I sat and mused; the fire burned low, | |
| And, o’er my senses stealing, | 10 |
| Crept something of the ruddy glow | |
| That bloomed on wall and ceiling; | |
| My pictures (they are very few, | |
| The heads of ancient wise men) | |
| Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew | 15 |
| As rosy as excisemen. | |
| |
| My antique high-backed Spanish chair | |
| Felt thrills through wood and leather, | |
| That had been strangers since whilere, | |
| Mid Andalusian heather, | 20 |
| The oak that made its sturdy frame | |
| His happy arms stretched over | |
| The ox whose fortunate hide became | |
| The bottom’s polished cover. | |
| |
| It came out in that famous bark, | 25 |
| That brought our sires intrepid, | |
| Capacious as another ark | |
| For furniture decrepit; | |
| For, as that saved of bird and beast | |
| A pair for propagation, | 30 |
| So has the seed of these increased | |
| And furnished half the nation. | |
| |
| Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; | |
| But those slant precipices | |
| Of ice the northern voyager meets | 35 |
| Less slippery are than this is; | |
| To cling therein would pass the wit | |
| Of royal man or woman, | |
| And whatsoe’er can stay in it | |
| Is more or less than human. | 40 |
| |
| I offer to all bores this perch, | |
| Dear well-intentioned people | |
| With heads as void as week-day church, | |
| Tongues longer than the steeple; | |
| To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes | 45 |
| See golden ages rising,— | |
| Salt of the earth! In what queer Guys | |
| Thou ’rt fond of crystallizing! | |
| |
| My wonder, then, was not unmixed | |
| With merciful suggestion, | 50 |
| When, as my roving eyes grew fixed | |
| Upon the chair in question, | |
| I saw its trembling arms enclose | |
| A figure grim and rusty, | |
| Whose doublet plain and plainer hose | 55 |
| Were something worn and dusty. | |
| |
| Now even such men as Nature forms | |
| Merely to fill the street with, | |
| Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, | |
| Are serious things to meet with; | 60 |
| Your penitent spirits are no jokes, | |
| And, though I ’m not averse to | |
| A quiet shade, even they are folks | |
| One cares not to speak first to. | |
| |
| Who knows, thought I, but he has come, | 65 |
| By Charon kindly ferried, | |
| To tell me of a mighty sum | |
| Behind my wainscot buried? | |
| There is a buccaneerish air | |
| About that garb outlandish— | 70 |
| Just then the ghost drew up his chair | |
| And said, “My name is Standish. | |
| |
| “I come from Plymouth, deadly bored | |
| With toasts, and songs, and speeches, | |
| As long and flat as my old sword, | 75 |
| As threadbare as my breeches: | |
| They understand us Pilgrims! they, | |
| Smooth men with rosy faces, | |
| Strength’s knots and gnarls all pared away, | |
| And varnish in their places! | 80 |
| |
| “We had some toughness in our grain, | |
| The eye to rightly see us is | |
| Not just the one that lights the brain | |
| Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses: | |
| They talk about their Pilgrim blood, | 85 |
| Their birthright high and holy! | |
| A mountain-stream that ends in mud | |
| Methinks is melancholy. | |
| |
| “He had stiff knees, the Puritan, | |
| That were not good at bending; | 90 |
| The homespun dignity of man | |
| He thought was worth defending; | |
| He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, | |
| His country’s shame forgotten, | |
| Gild Freedom’s coffin o’er and o’er, | 95 |
| When all within was rotten. | |
| |
| “These loud ancestral boasts of yours, | |
| How can they else than vex us? | |
| Where were your dinner orators | |
| When slavery grasped at Texas? | 100 |
| Dumb on his knees was every one | |
| That now is bold as Cæsar; | |
| Mere pegs to hang an office on | |
| Such stalwart men as these are.” | |
| |
| “Good sir,” I said, “you seem much stirred; | 105 |
| The sacred compromises—” | |
| “Now God confound the dastard word! | |
| My gall thereat arises: | |
| Northward it hath this sense alone, | |
| That you, your conscience blinding, | 110 |
| Shall bow your fool’s nose to the stone, | |
| When slavery feels like grinding, | |
| |
| “’T is shame to see such painted sticks | |
| In Vane’s and Winthrop’s places, | |
| To see your spirit of Seventy-six | 115 |
| Drag humbly in the traces, | |
| With slavery’s lash upon her back, | |
| And herds of office-holders | |
| To shout applause, as, with a crack, | |
| It peels her patient shoulders. | 120 |
| |
| “We forefathers to such a rout!— | |
| No, by my faith in God’s word!” | |
| Half rose the ghost, and half drew out | |
| The ghost of his old broadsword, | |
| Then thrust it slowly back again, | 125 |
| And said, with reverent gesture, | |
| “No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain | |
| The hem of thy white vesture. | |
| |
| “I feel the soul in me draw near | |
| The mount of prophesying; | 130 |
| In this bleak wilderness I hear | |
| A John the Baptist crying; | |
| Far in the east I see upleap | |
| The streaks of first forewarning, | |
| And they who sowed the light shall reap | 135 |
| The golden sheaves of morning. | |
| |
| “Child of our travail and our woe, | |
| Light in our day of sorrow, | |
| Through my rapt spirit I foreknow | |
| The glory of thy morrow; | 140 |
| I hear great steps, that through the shade | |
| Draw nigher still and nigher, | |
| And voices call like that which bade | |
| The prophet come up higher.” | |
| |
| I looked, no form mine eyes could find, | 145 |
| I heard the red cock crowing, | |
| And through my window-chinks the wind | |
| A dismal tune was blowing; | |
| Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham | |
| Hath somewhat in him gritty, | 150 |
| Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, | |
| And he will print my ditty. | |
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