Monadnoc

Thousand minstrels woke within me,'Our music's in the hills;'--Gayest pictures rose to win me,Leopard-colored rills.'Up!--If thou knew'st who callsTo twilight parks of beech and pine,High over the river intervals,Above the ploughman's highest line,Over the owner's farthest walls!Up! where the airy citadelO'erlooks the surging landscape's swell!Let not unto the stones the DayHer lily and rose, her sea and land display.Read the celestial sign!Lo! the south answers to the north;Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;A greater spirit bids thee forthThan the gray dreams which thee detain.Mark how the climbing OreadsBeckon thee to their arcades;Youth, for a moment free as they,Teach thy feet to feel the ground,Ere yet arrives the wintry dayWhen Time thy feet has bound.Take the bounty of thy birth,Taste the lordship of the earth.'

I heard, and I obeyed,--Assured that he who made the claim,Well known, but loving not a name,Was not to be gainsaid.Ere yet the summoning voice was still,I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowedLike ample banner flung abroadTo all the dwellers in the plainsRound about, a hundred miles,With salutation to the sea and to the bordering isles.In his own loom's garment dressed,By his proper bounty blessed,Fast abides this constant giver,Pouring many a cheerful river;To far eyes, an aerial isleUnploughed, which finer spirits pile,Which morn and crimson evening paintFor bard, for lover and for saint;An eyemark and the country's core,Inspirer, prophet evermore;Pillar which God aloft had setSo that men might it not forget;It should be their life's ornament,And mix itself with each event;Gauge and calendar and dial,Weatherglass and chemic phial,Garden of berries, perch of birds,Pasture of pool-haunting herds,Graced by each change of sum untold,Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.

The Titan heeds his sky-affairs,Rich rents and wide alliance shares;Mysteries of color daily laidBy morn and eve in light and shade;And sweet varieties of chance,And the mystic seasons' dance;And thief-like step of liberal hoursThawing snow-drift into flowers.O, wondrous craft of plant and stoneBy eldest science wrought and shown!

'Happy,' I said, 'whose home is here!Fair fortunes to the mountaineer!Boon Nature to his poorest shedHas royal pleasure-grounds outspread.'Intent, I searched the region round,And in low hut the dweller found:Woe is me for my hope's downfall!Is yonder squalid peasant allThat this proud nursery could breedFor God's vicegerency and stead?Time out of mind, this forge of ores;Quarry of spars in mountain pores;Old cradle, hunting-ground and bierOf wolf and otter, bear and deer;Well-built abode of many a race;Tower of observance searching space;Factory of river and of rain;Link in the Alps' globe-girding chain;By million changes skilled to tellWhat in the Eternal standeth well,And what obedient Nature can;--Is this colossal talismanKindly to plant and blood and kind,But speechless to the master's mind?I thought to find the patriotsIn whom the stock of freedom roots;To myself I oft recountTales of many a famous mount,--Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells:Bards, Roys, Scanderbegs and Tells;And think how Nature in these towersUplifted shall condense her powers,And lifting man to the blue deepWhere stars their perfect courses keep,Like wise preceptor, lure his eyeTo sound the science of the sky,And carry learning to its heightOf untried power and sane delight:The Indian cheer, the frosty skies,Rear purer wits, inventive eyes,--Eyes that frame cities where none be,And hands that stablish what these see:And by the moral of his placeHint summits of heroic grace;Man in these crags a fastness findTo fight pollution of the mind;In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,Adhere like this foundation strong,The insanity of towns to stemWith simpleness for stratagem.But if the brave old mould is broke,And end in churls the mountain folkIn tavern cheer and tavern joke,Sink, O mountain, in the swamp!Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lamp!Perish like leaves, the highland breedNo sire survive, no son succeed!

Soft! let not the offended museToil's hard hap with scorn accuse.Many hamlets sought I then,Many farms of mountain men.Rallying round a parish steepleNestle warm the highland people,Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,Strong as giant, slow as child.Sweat and season are their arts,Their talismans are ploughs and carts;And well the youngest can commandHoney from the frozen land;With cloverheads the swamp adorn,Change the running sand to corn;For wolf and fox, bring lowing herds,And for cold mosses, cream and curds:Weave wood to canisters and mats;Drain sweet maple juice in vats.No bird is safe that cuts the airFrom their rifle or their snare;No fish, in river or in lake,But their long hands it thence will take;Whilst the country's flinty face,Like wax, their fashioning skill betrays,To fill the hollows, sink the hills,Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,And fit the bleak and howling wasteFor homes of virtue, sense and taste.The World-soul knows his own affair,Forelooking, when he would prepareFor the next ages, men of mouldWell embodied, well ensouled,He cools the present's fiery glow,Sets the life-pulse strong but slow:Bitter winds and fasts austereHis quarantines and grottoes, whereHe slowly cures decrepit flesh,And brings it infantile and fresh.Toil and tempest are the toysAnd games to breathe his stalwart boys:They bide their time, and well can prove,If need were, their line from Jove;Of the same stuff, and so allayed,As that whereof the sun is made,And of the fibre, quick and strong,Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.

Now in sordid weeds they sleep,In dulness now their secret keep;Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,These the masters who can teach.Fourscore or a hundred wordsAll their vocal muse affords;But they turn them in a fashionPast clerks' or statesmen's art or passion.I can spare the college bell,And the learned lecture, well;Spare the clergy and libraries,Institutes and dictionaries,For that hardy English rootThrives here, unvalued, underfoot.Rude poets of the tavern hearth,Squandering your unquoted mirth,Which keeps the ground and never soars,While Jake retorts and Reuben roars;Scoff of yeoman strong and stark,Goes like bullet to its mark;While the solid curse and jeerNever balk the waiting ear.

On the summit as I stood,O'er the floor of plain and floodSeemed to me, the towering hillWas not altogether still,But a quiet sense conveyed:If I err not, thus it said:--

'Many feet in summer seek,Oft, my far-appearing peak;In the dreaded winter time,None save dappling shadows climb,Under clouds, my lonely head,Old as the sun, old almost as the shade;And comest thouTo see strange forests and new snow,And tread uplifted land?And leavest thou thy lowland race,Here amid clouds to stand?And wouldst be my companionWhere I gaze, and still shall gaze,Through tempering nights and flashing days,When forests fall, and man is gone,Over tribes and over times,At the burning Lyre,Nearing me,With its stars of northern fire,In many a thousand years?

'Gentle pilgrim, if thou knowThe gamut old of Pan,And how the hills began,The frank blessings of the hillFall on thee, as fall they will.

'Let him heed who can and will;Enchantment fixed me hereTo stand the hurts of time, untilIn mightier chant I disappear.If thou trowestHow the chemic eddies play,Pole to pole, and what they say;And that these gray cragsNot on crags are hung,But beads are of a rosaryOn prayer and music strung;And, credulous, through the granite seeming,Seest the smile of Reason beaming;--Can thy style-discerning eyeThe hidden-working Builder spy,Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,With hammer soft as snowflake's flight;--Knowest thou this?O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!Already my rocks lie light,And soon my cone will spin.

'For the world was built in order,And the atoms march in tune;Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,The sun obeys them and the moon.Orb and atom forth they prance,When they hear from far the rune;None so backward in the troop,When the music and the danceReach his place and circumstance,But knows the sun-creating sound,And, though a pyramid, will bound.

'Monadnoc is a mountain strong,Tall and good my kind among;But well I know, no mountain can,Zion or Meru, measure with man.For it is on zodiacs writ,Adamant is soft to wit:And when the greater comes againWith my secret in his brain,I shall pass, as glides my shadowDaily over hill and meadow.

'Through all time, in light, in gloomWell I hear the approaching feetOn the flinty pathway beatOf him that cometh, and shall come;Of him who shall as lightly bearMy daily load of woods and streams,As doth this round sky-cleaving boatWhich never strains its rocky beams;Whose timbers, as they silent float,Alps and Caucasus uprear,And the long Alleghanies here,And all town-sprinkled lands that be,Sailing through stars with all their history.

'Every morn I lift my head,See New England underspread,South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,From Katskill east to the sea-bound.Anchored fast for many an age,I await the bard and sage,Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.Comes that cheerful troubadour,This mound shall throb his face before,As when, with inward fires and pain,It rose a bubble from the plain.When he cometh, I shall shed,From this wellspring in my head,Fountain-drop of spicier worthThan all vintage of the earth.There's fruit upon my barren soilCostlier far than wine or oil.There's a berry blue and gold,--Autumn-ripe, its juices holdSparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,Asia's rancor, Athens' art,Slowsure Britain's secular might,And the German's inward sight.I will give my son to eatBest of Pan's immortal meat,Bread to eat, and juice to drain;So the coinage of his brainShall not be forms of stars, but stars,Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars,He comes, but not of that race bredWho daily climb my specular head.Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,Fled the last plumule of the Dark,Pants up hither the spruce clerkFrom South Cove and City Wharf.I take him up my rugged sides,Half-repentant, scant of breath,--Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,And my midsummer snow:Open the daunting map beneath,--All his county, sea and land,Dwarfed to measure of his hand;His day's ride is a furlong space,His city-tops a glimmering haze.I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;"See there the grim gray roundingOf the bullet of the earthWhereon ye sail,Tumbling steepIn the uncontinented deep."He looks on that, and he turns pale.'T is even so, this treacherous kite,Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,Thoughtless of its anxious freight,Plunges eyeless on forever;And he, poor parasite,Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,--Who is the captain he knows not,Port or pilot trows not,--Risk or ruin he must share.I scowl on him with my cloud,With my north wind chill his blood;I lame him, clattering down the rocks;And to live he is in fear.Then, at last, I let him downOnce more into his dapper town,To chatter, frightened, to his clanAnd forget me if he can.'

As in the old poetic fameThe gods are blind and lame,And the simular despiteBetrays the more abounding might,So call not waste that barren coneAbove the floral zone,Where forests starve:It is pure use;--What sheaves like those which here we glean and bindOf a celestial Ceres and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,Thou grand affirmer of the present tense,And type of permanence!Firm ensign of the fatal Being,Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief,That will not bide the seeing!

Hither we bringOur insect miseries to thy rocks;And the whole flight, with folded wing,Vanish, and end their murmuring,--Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,Which who can tell what mason laid?Spoils of a front none need restore,Replacing frieze and architrave;--Where flowers each stone rosette and metope brave;Still is the haughty pile erectOf the old building Intellect.

Complement of human kind,Holding us at vantage still,Our sumptuous indigence,O barren mound, thy plenties fill!We fool and prate;Thou art silent and sedate.To myriad kinds and times one senseThe constant mountain doth dispense;Shedding on all its snows and leaves,One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.Thou seest, O watchman tall,Our towns and races grow and fall,And imagest the stable goodFor which we all our lifetime grope,In shifting form the formless mind,And though the substance us elude,We in thee the shadow find.Thou, in our astronomyAn opaker star,Seen haply from afar,Above the horizon's hoop,A moment, by the railway troop,As o'er some bolder height they speed,--By circumspect ambition,By errant gain,By feasters and the frivolous,--Recallest us,And makest sane.Mute orator! well skilled to plead,And send conviction without phrase,Thou dost succor and remedeThe shortness of our days,And promise, on thy Founder's truth,Long morrow to this mortal youth.