November

Oh! who is there of us that has not felt

The sad decadence of the failing year,

And marked the lesson still with grief and fear

Writ in the rolled leaf and widely dealt?

When now no longer burns yon woodland belt

Bright with disease; no tree in glowing death

Leans forth a cheek of flame to fade and melt

In the warm current of the west wind's breath;

Nor yet through low blue mist on slope and plain

Droops the red sunlight in a dream of day;

But from that lull the winds of change have burst

And dashed the drowsy leaf with shattering rain,

And swung the groves, and roared, and wreaked their worst

Till all the world is harsh and cold and gray.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

April

The first of April! yet November's haze

Hangs on the wood, and blurs the hill's blue tip:

The light of noon rests wanly on the strip

Of sandy road, recalling leaf-laid ways,

Shades stilled in death, and tender twillight days

Ere Winter lifts the wind-trump to his lip.

No moss is shyly seen a tuft to raise,

Nor under grass a gold-eyed flower to dip;

Nor sound is breathed, but haply the south west

Faint rippling in the brushes of the pine,

Or of the shrunken leaf dry-fluttering.

Compact the village lies, a whitened line

Gathered in smoke. What holds this brooding rest?

Is it dead Autumn, or the dreaming Spring?

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Inspiration

The common paths by which we walk and wind

Unheedful, but perhaps to wish them done,

Though edged with brier and clotbur, bear behind

Such leaves as Milton wears or Shakespeare won.

Still, could we look with clear poetic faith,

No day so desert but a footway hath,

Which still explored, though dimly traced it turn,

May yet arrive where gates of glory burn:

Nay, scarce an hour of all the shining twelve

But to the inmost sight may ope a valve

On those hid gardens where the great of old

Walked from the world and their sick hearts consoled

Mid bowers that fall not, wells which never waste,

And gathered flowers, the fruit whereof we taste:

While, of the silent hours that mourn the day,

Not one but bears a poet's crown away,

Regardless or unconscious how he might

Collect an import from the fires of night,

Which, when the hand is still, and fixed the head,

Shall tremble starlike o'er the undying dead;

And, with a tearful glory,

    Through the darkness shadowing then,

Still light the sleeper's story

    In the memories of men.

And such are mine: for me these scenes decay:

For me, in hues of change, are ever born

The faded crimson of a wasted day,

The gold and purple braveries of the morn,

The life of Spring, the strength that Summer gains,

The dying foliage sad September stains;

By latter Autumn shattered on the plain,

Massed by the wind, blent by the rotting rain;

Till belts of snow from cliff to cliff appear,

And whitely link the dead and newborn year.

All these, to music deep, for me unfold,

Yet vaguely die: their sense I cannot hold,

But shudder inly as the years drop by

And leave me lifting still a darkened eye.

Or if from these despondingly I go

To look for light where clear examples glow,

Though names constellate glitter overhead

To prompt the path and guide the failing tread,

I linger, watching for a warmer gleam,

While still my spirit shivers and I seem

Like one constrained to wander

    Alone till morning light,

Beneath the hopeless grandeur

    Of a star-filled winter's night.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Picomegan

Stars of gold the green sod fretting,

Clematis the thicket netting,

Silvery moss her locks down-letting

Like a maiden brave:

Arrowhead his dark flag wetting

In thy darker wave.

By the River's broken border

Wading through the ferns,

When a darker deep, and broader,

Fills its bays and turns:

Up along the winding ridges,

Down the sudden-dropped descent,

Rounding pools with reedy edges,

Silent coves in alders pent,

Through the river-flags and sedges

Dreamily I went.

Dreamily, for perfect Summer

Hushed the vales with misty heat;

In the wood a drowsy drummer,

The woodpecker, faintly beat.

Songs were silent, save the voices

Of the mountain and the flood,

Save the wisdom of the voices

Only known in solitude:

But to me, a lonely liver,

All that fading afternoon,

From the undermining river

Came a burthen in its tune,

Came a tone my ear remembers,

And I said, "What grief thee grieves,

Pacing through thy leafy chambers,

And thy voice of rest bereaves?

Winds of change that wail and bluster,

Sunless morns and shivering eves,

Carry sweets to thee belonging;

All of light thy rim receives:

River-growths that fold and cluster

Following where the waters lead,

Bushes of the purple aster,

Mints and blood-dropped jewelweed

Like carnelians hanging

'Mid their pale-green leaves;

Wherefore then with sunlight heaping

Perfect joy and promised good,

When thy flow should pulse in keeping

With the beating of the blood,

Through thy dim green shadows sweeping

When the folded heart is sleeping,

Dost thou mourn and brood?"

Wider, wilder, round the headland,

Black the River swung,

Over kirt and hanging woodland

Deeper stillness hung;

As once more I stood a dreamer

The waste weeds among:

Doubt, and pain, and grief extremer

Seemed to fall away,

But a dim voluptuous sorrow

Smote and thrilled my fancy thoro', [sic]

Gazing over bend and bay:

Saying, "Thou O mournful River

As of old dost wind and waste,

Falling down the reef forever,

Rustling with a sound of haste

Through the dry-fringed meadow bottom;

But my hands aside thy bed

Gather now no gems of Autumn,

Or the dainties Summer shed;

By the margin hoarsely flowing,

Yellow dock and garget growing,

Drifts of wreck and muddy stain,

By river-wash and dregs of rain.

Yet, though bound in desolation,

Bound and locked, thy waters pour

With a cry of exultation

Uncontained by shore and shore,

With a booming deep vibration;

In its wind my cheek is wet,

But unheeding woe or warning

Thou through all the barren hours

Seem'st to sing of Summer yet;

Thou with voice all sorrow scorning

Babblest on of leaves and flowers,

Wearily, whilst I go mourning

O'er thy fallen banks and bowers;

O'er a life small grace adorning,

With lost aims and broken powers

Wreck-flung, like these wavetorn beaches,

Tear trenched, as by winter showers.

But a faith thy music teaches

Might I to its knowledge climb,

Still the yearning heart beseeches

Truth, as when in summer time

Through these dells I vaguely sought her,

In the dreamy summer time."

So the margin paths and reaches

Once again I left to roam,

Left behind the roaring water,

Eddy knots, and clots of foam;

But it still disturbed me ever,

As a dream no reason yields,

From the ruin of the river,

Winding up through empty fields,

That I could not gather something

Of the meaning and belief,

In the voice of its triumphing

Or the wisdom of its grief.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Sonnets: First Series

(Selected Sonnets)

I

Sometimes, when winding slow by brook and bower,

Beating the idle grass,--of what avail,

I ask, are these dim fancies, cares and fears?

What though from every bank I drew a flower,--

Bloodroot, king orchis, or the pearlwort pale,--

And set it in my verse with thoughtful tears?

What would it count though I should sing my death

And muse and mourn with as poetic breath

As in damp garden walks the autumn gale

Sighs o'er the fallen floriage? What avail

Is the swan's voice if all the hearers fail?

Or his great flight that no eye gathereth

In the blending blue? And yet depending so,

God were not God, whom knowledge cannot know.

V

And so the day drops by, the horizon draws

The fading sun and we stand struck in grief,

Failing to find our haven of relief,

Wide of the way, nor sure to turn or pause,

And weep to view how fast the splendor wanes

And scarcely heed that yet some share remains

Of the red afterlight, some time to mark,

Some space between the sundown and the dark;

But not for him those golden calms succeed

Who while the day is high and glory reigns

Sees it go by, as the dim pampas plain,

Hoary with salt and gray with bitter weed,

Sees the vault blacken, feels the dark wind strain,

Hears the dry thunder roll, and knows no rain.

VI

Not sometimes, but to him that heeds the whole

And in the Ample reads his personal page,

Laboring to reconcile, content, assuage

The vexed condition of his heritage,

Forever waits an angel at the goal.

And ills seem but as food for spirits sage,

And grief becomes a dark apparelage,

The weed and wearing of the sacred soul.

Might I but count, but here, one watchlight spark!

But vain, O vain this turning for the light,

Vain as a groping hand to rend the dark--

I call, entangled in the night, a night

Of wind and voices, but the gusty roll

Is vague, nor comes their cheer of pilotage.

VII

Dank fens of cedar, hemlock branches gray

With trees and trail of mosses, wringing-wet,

Beds of the black pitchpine in dead leaves set

Whose wasted red has wasted to white away,

Remnants of rain and droppings of decay,

Why hold ye so my heart, nor dimly let

Through your deep leaves the light of yesterday,

The faded glimmer of a sunshine set?

Is it that in your darkness, shut from strife,

The bread of tears becomes the bread of life?

Far from the roar of day, beneath your boughs

Fresh griefs beat tranquilly, and loves and vows

Grow green in your gray shadows, dearer far

Even than all lovely lights and roses are?

X

An upper chamber in a darkened house,

Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood's brink,

Terror and anguish were his lot to drink;

I cannot rid the thought nor hold it close

But dimly dream upon that man alone:

Now though the autumn clouds most softly pass,

The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone

And greener than the season grows the grass.

Nor can I drop my lids nor shade my brows,

But there he stands beside the lifted sash;

And with a swooping of the heart, I think

Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs

And, shattered on the roof like smallest snows,

The tiny petals of the mountain ash.

XIII

As one who walks and weeps by alien brine

And hears the heavy land-wash break, so I,

Apart from friends, remote in misery,

But brood on pain and find in heaven no sign:

The lights are strange, and bitter voices by.

So the doomed sailor, left alone to die,

Looks sadly seaward at the day's decline

And hears his parting comrades' jeers and scoffs

Or sees through mists that hinder and deform

The dewy stars of home, sees Regulus shine

With a hot flicker through the murky damp

And setting Sirius twitch and twinge like a lamp

Slung to the masthead in a night of storm

Of lonely vessel laboring in the troughs.

XXVI

For Nature daily through her grand design

Breathes contradiction where she seems most clear,

For I have held of her the gift to hear

And felt indeed endowed of sense divine

When I have found by guarded insight fine,

Cold April flowers in the green end of June,

And thought myself possessed of Nature's ear

When by the lonely mill-brook into mine,

Seated on slab or trunk asunder sawn,

The night-hawk blew his horn at summer noon;

And in the rainy midnight I have heard

The ground sparrow's long twitter from the pine,

And the catbird's silver song, the wakeful bird

That to the lighted window sings for dawn.

XXVII

So to the mind long brooding but on it

A haunting theme for anger, joy, or tears,

With ardent eyes, not what we think appears;

But hunted home, behold! its opposite.

Worn sorrow breaking in disastrous mirth,

And wild tears wept of laughter, like the drops

Shook by the trampling thunder to the earth;

And each seems either, or but a counterfeit

Of that it would dissemble: hopes are fears

And love is woe: nor here the discord stops;

But through all human life runs the account,

Born into pain and ending bitterly--

Yet sweet perchance, betweentime, like a fount

That rises salt and freshens to the sea.

XXVIII

Not the round natural world, not the deep mind,

The reconcilement holds: the blue abyss

Collects it not; our arrows sink amiss

And but in Him may we our import find.

The agony to know, the grief, the bliss

Of toil, is vain and vain: clots of the sod

Gathered in heat and haste and flung behind

To blind ourselves and others, what but this

Still grasping dust and sowing toward the wind?

No more thy meaning seek, thine anguish plead,

But leaving straining thought and stammering word,

Across the barren azure pass to God:

Shooting the void in silence like a bird,

A bird that shuts his wings for better speed.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman