No More Learning

POVERTY

A FRAGMENT

If I am poor,
It is that I am proud;
If God has made me naked and a boor,
He did not think it fit his work to shroud.

The poor man comes direct from heaven to earth,
As stars drop down the sky, and tropic beams;
The rich receives in our gross air his birth,
As from low suns are slanted golden gleams.

Yon sun is naked, bare of satellite,
Unless our earth and moon that office hold;
Though his perpetual day feareth no night,
And his perennial summer dreads no cold.

Mankind may delve, but cannot my wealth spend;
If I no partial wealth appropriate,
No armed ships unto the Indies send,
None robs me of my Orient estate.


PILGRIMS

"Have you not seen,
In ancient times,
Pilgrims pass by
Toward other climes,
With shining faces,
Youthful and strong,
Mounting this hill
With speech and with song? "

"Ah, my good sir,
I know not those ways;
Little my knowledge,
Tho' many my days.
When I have slumbered,
I have heard sounds
As of travelers passing
These my grounds.

"'T was a sweet music
Wafted them by,
I could not tell
If afar off or nigh.
Unless I dreamed it,
This was of yore:
I never told it
To mortal before,
Never remembered
But in my dreams
What to me waking
A miracle seems. "


THE DEPARTURE

In this roadstead I have ridden,
In this covert I have hidden;
Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me,
And I hid beneath their lee.

This true people took the stranger,
And warm-hearted housed the ranger;
They received their roving guest,
And have fed him with the best;

Whatsoe'er the land afforded
To the stranger's wish accorded;
Shook the olive, stripped the vine,
And expressed the strengthening wine.

And by night they did spread o'er him
What by day they spread before him;--
That good-will which was repast
Was his covering at last.

The stranger moored him to their pier
Without anxiety or fear;
By day he walked the sloping land,
By night the gentle heavens he scanned.

When first his bark stood inland
To the coast of that far Finland,
Sweet-watered brooks came tumbling to the shore
The weary mariner to restore.

And still he stayed from day to day
If he their kindness might repay;
But more and more
The sullen waves came rolling toward the shore.
And still the more the stranger waited,
The less his argosy was freighted,
And still the more he stayed,
The less his debt was paid.

So he unfurled his shrouded mast
To receive the fragrant blast;
And that sane refreshing gale
Which had wooed him to remain
Again and again,
It was that filled his sail
And drove him to the main.

All day the low-hung clouds
Dropt tears into the sea;
And the wind amid the shrouds
Sighed plaintively.


INDEPENDENCE[15]

My life more civil is and free
Than any civil polity.

Ye princes, keep your realms
And circumscribed power,
Not wide as are my dreams,
Nor rich as is this hour.

What can ye give which I have not?
What can ye take which I have got?
Can ye defend the dangerless?
Can ye inherit nakedness?

To all true wants Time's ear is deaf,
Penurious states lend no relief
Out of their pelf:
But a free soul--thank God--
Can help itself.

Be sure your fate
Doth keep apart its state,
Not linked with any band,
Even the noblest of the land;

In tented fields with cloth of gold
No place doth hold,
But is more chivalrous than they are,
And sigheth for a nobler war;
A finer strain its trumpet sings,
A brighter gleam its armor flings.

The life that I aspire to live
No man proposeth me;
No trade upon the street[16]
Wears its emblazonry.


DING DONG[17]

When the world grows old by the chimney-side
Then forth to the youngling nooks I glide,
Where over the water and over the land
The bells are booming on either hand.

Now up they go ding, then down again dong,
And awhile they ring to the same old song,
For the metal goes round at a single bound,
A-cutting the fields with its measured sound,
While the tired tongue falls with a lengthened boom
As solemn and loud as the crack of doom.

Then changed is their measure to tone upon tone,
And seldom it is that one sound comes alone,
For they ring out their peals in a mingled throng,
And the breezes waft the loud ding-dong along.

When the echo hath reached me in this lone vale,
I am straightway a hero in coat of mail,
I tug at my belt and I march on my post,
And feel myself more than a match for a host.