"I Heard It Said"

1
A roaring river
is the shorest distance
between two places.
Once you got up the guts or necessity
to throw yourself into its flow
it took you to the next town
in a fraction of the time
it would have taken
if you had walked
or been running for your life.

2
No one looked as good
with her clothes off
as Helen from Troy.
I've seen men trade their tractors
sell their last hunting rifles
for a peek that proved
the man who started the rumor
as right as anything
in the Bible.

3
It's a sin to tell a lie
even if it gets you laid
or paid in full.
I'm still waiting
for lightning to strike
me dead or regretful
for those satisfactions.

4
Jesus is Lord
despite the flesh wounds
that even resurrection couldn't heal.
He appeared to his followers
like a mirage in the desert
40 days after the hanging.
By then most of his friends
had new lives going
identical to the old ones
he interrupted.

5
Don't believe what you read in the papers.
The truth is what suits someone's purpose--
someone who's got big plans for you
and bigger plans for himself.

6
Love your neighbor
as you would yourself.
I gave that advice a try
and offered my wife for his.
If you want to know what happened next
go back to the first poem
and pray you're a good swimmer.

--David Federman, February 28, 2014

Letters To My Grnadchildren

1

Dear Max and Maxine,

The coast is not yet clear.

Storm warnings are still in effect.

You couldn't have picked a worse time

for glad tidings.

Stay hidden

in the gauzy, tender folds

of dreamland

until further notice.

2

My Sweet Little Gossamers,

What’s the rush?

There is nothing left but consequence

of the industrial colossus

your parents’ parents were the last ones 

with liberty to take for granted.

When we walked away

we never dreamed

a day would come

when we couldn't find 

a spot of wasteland remaining

to spit on

in defiance or disgust.

3

My Wonderful Un-Created Ones, 

What can your progenitors offer

to make it worth your while

to trade paradise

for this parking lot?

This Eden is in rapid transition from Earth to Mars.

Deconstruction signs are everywhere.

The moment you are born

your bones will already be fossils

not worth finding

by anyone intent on seeing

signs of life

worth living.

4

My Foolish Urchins,

Remain in God.

There is no greater proof of Him

than the silence

He has no need to break

as long as you stay put 

in paradise.

5

My Good Little Godlings,

The newborn forget everything they knew

within days of their arrival.

A growing number of them

think the place they left

is filled with vestal virgins

just itching for the sex

they were promised

for blowing up a coffee shop.

Keep the remembrance

of true heaven alive

by laughing at any thought of leaving

that unruined realm of souls.

6

Dear Baby Jesus and Mary,

Please don’t become the price

your parents had to pay

for a roll in the hay.

Stay where you belong

and let the joy of their sex

be the reason

not an excuse 

for feeling it.

7

My Dearest Gleams,

I’m not saying to postpone

your travel plans forever.

What I’m saying is this:

Your parents have to earn the right

to dream of inviting you here.

The right to life

is the right to life worth living.

Those who force you on us now

can’t expect you

to fix the mess

they made of the place

and which your births 

will only make worse.

--Ardmore, February 27, 2014

We Stand By Our Words

The Nobel Prize has become a meaningless honor in just about every category in which it is given. In no area has this award been more besmirched than in that of world peace. Ever since President Obama was chosen as the Nobel Peace Laureate in October 2009, the committee has been making even more absurd, craven and irrelevant choices. We all know who deserved the prize in 2010: Julian Assange. And a year later it should have gone to Bradley Manning, followed by Edward Snowden. These men are the greatest peace activists in the world today. God bless them, keep them safe and secure their freedom from imprisonment.

Shortly after the announcement of President Obama as the Peace Prize recipient, Monique Frugier and myself wrote and circulated a petition to rescind the award to Obama. Only 134 people signed. When our commander-in-chief gave an acceptance speech that was comprised largely of a lecture on the necessity of "just war," he ridiculed the prize he was given and the people who gave it. It was a disgraceful performance. And we knew then, as we know now, we were right to have begged Oslo to come to its senses. Just for kicks, here's the text of our petition:

NØbel For Obama

When on October 9, 2009, Barack Obama became the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the world's most prestigious human affairs honor, it was viewed both by giver and recipient as an act of faith that would be justified by future actions. President Obama himself said it was more "a call to action" than a recognition of any specific accomplishment. In explaining its bold faith-based gesture, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said its unanimous decision was based on Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation among peoples." The Committee took special note of the president's restoration of "dialogue and negotiation" as the cornerstones of American foreign policy, lauding his leadership "on the basis of values and attitudes shared by the majority of the world's population" as well as "renewed US commitment to international organizations." We the undersigned believe that in the two months following this stirring announcement, President Obama has undermined the trust on which this award was made and by so doing sacrificed his eligibility for it. We cite two major violations of this trust: 1- the refusal to join the international Landmines Treaty five years after its ratification 2- the decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending an additional 30,000 US troops to that embattled nation. In light of President Obama's failure to accept the Nobel Committee's implicit invitation to be a peacemaker, we the undersigned ask this august body to revoke this award and, instead, give it to someone who has shown by actions not just rhetoric repeated commitment to the principles on which this award is based. In asking the Committee to take this unprecedented action, we believe that this body will be acknowledging its premature and mistaken judgment and also defending the integrity of this momentous honor. Last, we believe that such a revocation will send a message to all future recipients that their most inspired words must be followed by significant deeds. Note: The following petition to cancel awarding the Nobel Peace Price to Barack Obama will be sent to Dag Terje Anderson, the current president of the Norwegian Parliament, to forward to Thorbjorn Jagland, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee which is part of the parliament. 

Sponsor

Monique Frugier and David Federman, activists for Justice and Peace.

Poem: "Pilgrim's Progress"

1
Somewhere
where some of us
have learned
to sit still

the sum
of us
waits for
days like this

to become
every soul's
last known
whereabouts

2
You can't go home again
is an opinion held
by those who have never been
at home with themselves.

3
Revelation is a building permit:
Permission is granted
to make of yourself

the home
you have spent your life so far
failing to find.
 
4
Finders keepers
of the flame
no god would keep
for himself

Losers weepers
of the blame
no man has need for
once he is all

that remains

5
Home is habitat
where it is habit
to find what you need.

Lately it strikes you
the universe is designed
for competence.

6
Knock and the door shall open.
Ask and you shall receive.
How much clearer can the hanged man be
that every prayer for guidance is the answer to itself.

7
I can't sleep in rooms with crucifixes.
It isn't fair to leave a man stranded in agony.
Take him down and call an ambulance.
Resurrection is the good sense
to save the life of a man
who once saved yours.

--David Federman, Ardmore, February 23, 2014

Poem: "No Exit"

1
On the inside
looking out
no end in sight

no end of sight

2
God here
reporting for duty

God here
on the case

God here
using your eyes

to see
through

3
No other way
out

except to look
at it

with your eyes

4
Suppose you were
someone else

Suppose you were
the man you always wanted to be

Suppose you could be dead
in a painless instant

Suppose you could sleep
with Cleopatra or Bardot in their prime

Suppose you could turn shit
to gold

Whatever happens
nothing will be different

5
From the moment
you were born
you used light borrowed
from stars already dead a billion years.

From the moment
you were born
you were already living
in the afterlife.

6
Here is there
by being as far as
the eye can see

7
On a clear day
you can see forever.
On a cloudy day
you can see as far as
you need to.

8
You are so much like your father
the one with a capital 'F

9
Ways pursued
and ways abandoned
come to this full stop
of attention
paid
in panoramic full

10
Drinks are on the house.
The Milky Way
is crying rivers
of spilled milk
above the rooftops
this crystalline night.

11
No exit
from the theater
where you breathe
the fire that consumes it.

12
What's wrong with this picture?
Storm clouds so buxom
there can be no end of rain.
Yet the river does as asked
and stays away from your door.

13
You can't go home again

because

a) you never left.
b) your reasons for doing so aren't right.
c) it's an inappropriate question for a college admissions exam
d) it's none of your business.
e) it's the name of a novel by Thomas Wolfe


14
Mind is matter
and all the thoughts it is composed of.
No need to conquer
what you already own.

15
When asked how to find God,
Zen master Rinzai said,
"Looking for God
is like putting a head
on top of the one you already have."

"Do you mean
we should call off the search?"
a student inquired.
Rinzai answered,
"I would very much like to meet
the man you will call on to do that."

--David Federman, Ardmore, February 20, 2013

MY PRIVATE BROADBAND

Dear Deanna,

Beth's piece about driving around with music on the car radio that allows her to instill greater opportunity and choice for her children is well-written but to me it describes a life where cultural para-olympics are the only games in town. I never thought I'd say this but the word "broadband" is becoming an oxymoron as what Beth brilliantly calls "corporate algorithms" shrivel choice, chance and, with them, taste. I still feel obliged, as a matter of intellectual citizenship, to discover the music of genius that fell through the cracks decades ago. And so blackfaced black entertainer Bert Williams gets the regular air time in my private broadband he doesn't get elsewhere because his music, most of it recorded before WWI, doesn't lend itself to pilfering by the samplers of hip-hop nation. W.E.B. DuBois wrote his incandescent book, "The Souls of Black Folk," as a reflection on the transformative experience he had listening to a recording by the Tuskegee Quartet. So when I taught excerpts at Temple, where I was judged unfit to teach, I found the record and asked my kids to turn off cell phones, place their head on desks and go back in time to 1910 and try to hear what made DuBois write so eloquently. Then I asked the students to bring in music that had so transformed them. While most of the music they brought was Top 40, a few brought examples of very personal exploration. For just for a couple of hours, I think my classroom redefined broadband.

Sis, I am the pure product of personal discovery precisely because my own algorithms are based on discontinuity and lack of familiarity. "Make it new," Ezra Pound commanded me in my freshman year. Now his charges must KEEP IT NEW--and that increasingly means going as far back as the quenchless thirst for true music will take me. I still am reeling from the first hearing of a 1920 record, "Turn Back the Hands of Time" that places the impact of WWI and the great destroyers of inherited certainty like the theory of evolution into a sentimental parlor- song context about the common, contagious ache of alienation. Back then, when people were more likely to buy the sheet music for a song than the record they heard of it, music was communal and performance meant learning the music and its words for oneself. This is participation beyond any Rhapsody can give.

Last night, Mo and I watched an extraordinary childhood reminiscence by British director Terence Davis called "The Long Day Closes" that used music from Mahler to Doris Day, with lots of Catholic hymns thrown in, to SUMMON Liverpool circa 1956. The 1992 movie was non-narrative, non-linear, and yet it made the deepest impression on Mo and moi of any movie that pretends to conjure history that we can recall. To do so, it must serve as a centrifugal broadband. Much of the endlessly streamed music is songs sung by the hero's mother. Right near the end of the movie, when Bud, the hero, must face his "queerness," she sings "If I Had My Life to Live Over (I'd Live It The Same Way Again)" to help him affirm himself. Jesus, Deanna, I thought I was going to explode in tears. This was meta-memoir.

So, let me return to car and home life, and the music that is essential to it. When I'm alone in the car, I take my musical chances with four pre-progammed stations--Temple's, Princeton's, NPR, and a bona fide oldies station that play music mostly from the 1930s, 40s and 50s chosen by old geezers like myself who believe that more worlds can open with an old Ray Noble record than with White Stripes or Beyonce. Many a time I am the radio, and choose to complete a Mahler cycle or listen to the Webern Mo hates. I admit it: At home or in the car, I am a stranger in a strange land. But now I wouldn't have it any other way. This alienation is life-sustaining.

Love,

Yr Bro

P.S., I beg you to watch "The Long Day Closes."

Poem: "The Rattlesnake Diaries"

Existentialism is a way of negation, as Sufism is a way of affirmation. Having advocated both, I'm here to say they sing of the same one day and one time. The other morning when I awoke from a disturbing dream of exile, I remember turning the phrase "scared the living daylights out of me" over and over in my mind until it seems like the living daylights had returned to my innards. I remember thinking that if I could take things in like a rattle snake sunning on a rock, I'd have the courage and clarity I seemed to have lacked as I wandered around disconsolately in my dream. In 1863, during the height of the Civil War and constant nursing duties in Washington, Walt Whitman tried to imagine some sane purpose for war. He wrote: "The fiercest wars are yet to be fought--the wars of peace: the wars of classes that honor labor with castes that don't; the wars of the arts demanding admission to common life or common life to be admitted to and to vivify the arts; all the answers will require the strongest men--the restrained, the self-contained, the self-mastered men." Whitman's definition of strength as restraint, self-containment and self-mastery reminded me so much of the definition of the spiritual warrior that Krishna gives Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. It was then that I tried to imagine myself a so-called "cold-blooded" rattler on a rock much as Eugene O'Neil had imagined himself a sea gull. This poem was born/borne of that imagining.

THE RATTLESNAKE DIARIES

                        for Art Hochberg

1

Sunning on a rock.

Drinking up the closest star's light

like it was a six-pack.

You ain't lived

until you can take it for granted

or leave it alone.

Either way, this world's an entirety.

You ain't died

until you can leave no trace

of having been here

day after day.

Some--which is to say most--days

this earth feels like a shadow

things cast to hide in.

There living things practice a presence so full

they become absent

in the sum they account for.

2

The night tames the sun to moonlight.

And even then creatures take respite 

from the remaining heat of the day

in cavern coolness.

Sometimes I share a cave

with men in rags

who sleep on the same stones

I rest under.

It's them that treat me like a teacher

as we share this trance

called existence.

3

Hungry men imagine

I trap mice and birds

in a fatal squint of archer accuracy.

Shit, if it was that hard to find food

I'd call this a desert, too.

4

Prophets need the darkness

like a cold compress

placed on a fevered brow.

I've seen them talk to gods and devils

as if divinity and demon-thinking

were just moods of the same person.

You'd be amazed at what finds comfort here.

No scripture ever started in this place.

Prophets take rest from prophecy here.

I've never heard so many songs

about the pleasures of strawberries.

5

If I had to take form 

congenial to the city-lives my companions fled

I suppose I'd vote

the straight Communist ticket--

sharing restored,

everything taken

to be given away.

6

I never killed anything I've eaten.

Fear of dying strangled them

before I had to.

7

Nothing ventured

nothing gained.

The man who first said that

was seated right beside me

in this cave.

For hours he emptied his mind

then used the dark juice of berries

to paint the blur and thunder

of bison on the walls below them.

I've never seen the ocean

but I imagine that its surf

crashes like hooves

as it herds life ashore.

--David Federman, Ardmore, February 10, 2014

Thinking of Creeley

Dear Danny,

Thanks but no thanks for the video of the Chinese female nude orchestra. They sound worse than the Zieglersville Philharmonic. And they don't look all that good either. Very Stepford-y. In short, neither nut cracker or nut exciter--just ball-busting bad. God, I felt so jaded not being aroused in any way. 

In the mean and less demeaning time, a moment of Zen from Robert Creeley, brooding on the dying man he saw in the mirror that could be none other than the man who hopes he's not next in line. Then my mirroring poem.

THE MIRROR

Seeing is believing.

Whatever was thought or said,

these persistent, inexorable deaths

make faith as such absent,

our humanness a question,

a disgust for what we are.

Whatever the hope,

here it is lost.

Because we coveted our difference,

here is the cost.

--Robert Creeley, Life and Death, p. 31

THE SHARD

          for Robert Creeley and Fred F.

1.

Just enough glass

to see the face 

I still call "mine."

What choice do I have

but to see

this "me" that outlives "others"?

2.

But if I did have a choice,

if I was still bison-painting

caveman of the lysergic 60s,

what then?

The gathering dead

would leave

what's left of looking

to me and me alone.

They would know my gaze

holds them here

in an afterlife

that needs only this place

to occur once

and for all

for no other reason

than to stay

bidden to be

unhidden.

3.

This broken mirror

brings good luck.

Each shard multiplies seeing

into an insect multitude

of presences

hived and humming

in stillness.

4

Look at yourself.

Do you still believe the rumor

that you are alone?

See how looking instills

the morning with enough light

for retrieval of the forms

things take to come to mind.

One is not alone or lonely.

One is intersection.

One is crowd control. 

5.

Just one fragment will suffice

to betoken the permanent coexistence

of all worlds we could know

locked in the very sight of you.

David Federman, from: The Book of Migraine Melancholia

Winter Words

During Robert Creeley's last January on earth in 2005, he obsessed over John Greenleaf Whittier's long winter poem, "Snow-bound," written in 1863. In it the poet and his surviving brother remember all the family members who have gone before them--much as Creeley was doing in his later poems. Whittier's poem is, in part, a response to Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Snow-Storm," which depicts a snow-enshrouded New England. There the turbulent, unrelenting storm covers every created thing, leaving a world of traceries ("the wind's masonry") behind. I love the somewhat gnostic energy of this poem where the world is imagined "in a tumultuous privacy of storm." It is haunting, to say the least. Whittier faces the power residing in and revealed through the winter storm in words as good as Emerson's. But ultimately he seeks sheller from the storm's power while Emerson finds shelter within it. Whittier expresses faith in a reunion with the dead that I wish so much I shared. The poem is a processional remembrance of fireside stories as told by the (remembered) dead about the dead. Its nostalgia is painful--at lest for me. For me now, ancestry is a migraine ache of loss. Whittier pins all his hopes on a just God for transfiguration and reunion. I no longer do. But if you share his faith, you'll love the consolation it brings. Read below, as  a second excerpt, its first expression in the poem. For those who might want to read Whittier's poem in its gorgeous entirety, I have pasted it in full below. Although published privately, the work was a best-seller. God bless an America that once was truly blessed by its own people. They are present here.

The Snow-Storm

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly,

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;

Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

from "Snow-Bound" by James Greenleaf Whittier:

Excerpt 1:

All day the gusty north-wind bore

The loosening drift its breath before;

Low circling round its southern zone,

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.

No church-bell lent its Christian tone

To the savage air, no social smoke

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.

A solitude made more intense

By dreary-voicëd elements,

The shrieking of the mindless wind,

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,

And on the glass the unmeaning beat

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.

Beyond the circle of our hearth

No welcome sound of toil or mirth

Unbound the spell, and testified

Of human life and thought outside.

We minded that the sharpest ear

The buried brooklet could not hear,

The music of whose liquid lip

Had been to us companionship,

And, in our lonely life, had grown

To have an almost human tone.

Excerpt 2:

What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow

Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.

O Time and Change! -- with hair as gray

As was my sire's that winter day,

How strange it seems with so much gone,

Of life and love, to still live on!

Ah, brother! only I and thou

Are left of all that circle now,

--The dear home faces whereupon

That fitful firelight paled and shone.

Henceforward, listen as we will,

The voices of that hearth are still;

Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,

Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,

We sit beneath their orchard trees,

We hear, like them, the hum of bees

And rustle of the bladed corn;

We turn the pages that they read,

Their written words we linger o'er.

But in the sun they cast no shade,

No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor!

Yet love will dream, and Faith will trust

(Since He who knows our need is just),

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

 Snow-Bound 

A Winter Idyl

by John Greenleaf Whittier

To the Memory of the Household It Describes

This Poem is Dedicated by the Author

"As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of Wood doth the same."
      Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I, ch. v.

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of Storm."

      Emerson,The Snow Storm.

THE sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray,

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.

Slow tracing down the thickening sky

Its mute and ominous prophecy,

A portent seeming less than threat,

It sank from sight before it set.

A chill no coat, however stout,

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,

A hard, dull bitterness of cold,

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race

Of life-blood in the sharpened face,

The coming of the snow-storm told.

The wind blew east; we heard the roar

Of Ocean on his wintry shore,

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there

Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,

Brought in the wood from out the doors,

Littered the stalls, and from the mows

Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows;

Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;

And, sharply clashing horn on horn,

Impatient down the stanchion rows

The cattle shake their walnut bows;

While, peering from his early perch

Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,

The cock his crested helmet bent

And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light

The gray day darkened into night,

A night made hoary with the swarm

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,

As zigzag, wavering to and fro,

Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:

And ere the early bedtime came

The white drift piled the window-frame,

And through the glass the clothes-line posts

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant spendor, seemed to tell

Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"

Well pleased (for when did farmer boy

Count such a summons less than joy?)

Our buskins on our feet we drew;

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,

To guard our necks and ears from snow,

We cut the solid whiteness through.

And, where the drift was deepest, made

A tunnel walled and overlaid

With dazzling crystal: we had read

Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,

And to our own his name we gave,

With many a wish the luck were ours

To test his lamp's supernal powers.

We reached the barn with merry din,

And roused the prisoned brutes within.

The old horse thrust his long head out,

And grave with wonder gazed about;

The cock his lusty greeting said,

And forth his speckled harem led;

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,

And mild reproach of hunger looked;

The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,

Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,

Shook his sage head with gesture mute,

And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore

The loosening drift its breath before;

Low circling round its southern zone,

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.

No church-bell lent its Christian tone

To the savage air, no social smoke

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.

A solitude made more intense

By dreary-voicëd elements,

The shrieking of the mindless wind,

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,

And on the glass the unmeaning beat

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.

Beyond the circle of our hearth

No welcome sound of toil or mirth

Unbound the spell, and testified

Of human life and thought outside.

We minded that the sharpest ear

The buried brooklet could not hear,

The music of whose liquid lip

Had been to us companionship,

And, in our lonely life, had grown

To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest

Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,

The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank

From sight beneath the smothering bank,

We piled, with care, our nightly stack

Of wood against the chimney-back, --

The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,

And on its top the stout back-stick;

The knotty forestick laid apart,

And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,

We watched the first red blaze appear,

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,

Until the old, rude-furnished room

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;

While radiant with a mimic flame

Outside the sparkling drift became,

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.

The crane and pendent trammels showed,

The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;

While childish fancy, prompt to tell

The meaning of the miracle,

Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,

When fire outdoors burns merrily,

There the witches are making tea."

The moon above the eastern wood

Shone at its full; the hill-range stood

Transfigured in the silver flood,

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine

Took shadow, or the sombre green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black

Against the whiteness at their back.

For such a world and such a night

Most fitting that unwarming light,

Which only seemd where'er it fell

To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about,

Content to let the north-wind roar

In baffled rage at pane and door,

While the red logs before us beat

The frost-line back with tropic heat;

And ever, when a louder blast

Shook beam and rafter as it passed,

The merrier up its roaring draught

The great throat of the chimney laughed;

The house-dog on his paws outspread

Laid to the fire his drowsy head,

The cat's dark silhouette on the wall

A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;

And, for the winter fireside meet,

Between the andirons' straddling feet,

The mug of cider simmered slow,

The apples sputtered in a row,

And, close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October's wood.

What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow

Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.

O Time and Change! -- with hair as gray

As was my sire's that winter day,

How strange it seems with so much gone,

Of life and love, to still live on!

Ah, brother! only I and thou

Are left of all that circle now, --

The dear home faces whereupon

That fitful firelight paled and shone.

Henceforward, listen as we will,

The voices of that hearth are still;

Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,

Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,

We sit beneath their orchard trees,

We hear, like them, the hum of bees

And rustle of the bladed corn;

We turn the pages that they read,

Their written words we linger o'er.

But in the sun they cast no shade,

No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor!

Yet love will dream, and Faith will trust

(Since He who knows our need is just),

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!

Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,

Nor looks to see the breaking day

Across the mourful marbles play!

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,

The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,

Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,

Or stammered from our school-book lore

"The Chief of Gambia's golden shore."

How often since, when all the land

Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand,

As if a far-blown trumpet stirred

The languorous sin-sick air, I heard:

"Does not the voice of reason cry,

Claim the first right which Nature gave,

From the red scourge of bondage to fly,

Nor deign to live a burdened slave!"

Our father rode again his ride

On Memphremagog's wooded side;

Sat down again to moose and samp

In trapper's hut and Indian camp;

Lived o'er the old idyllic ease

Beneath St. François' hemlock-trees;

Again for him the moonlight shone

On Norman cap and bodiced zone;

Again he heard the violin play

Which led the village dance away,

And mingled in its merry whirl

The grandam and the laughing girl.

Or, nearer home, our steps he led

Where Salisbury's level marshes spread

Mile-wide as flied the laden bee;

Where merry mowers, hale and strong,

Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along

The low green prairies of the sea.

We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals

The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;

The chowder on the sand-beach made,

Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,

With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.

We heard the tales of witchcraft old,

And dream and sign and marvel told

To sleepy listeners as they lay

Stretched idly on the salted hay,

Adrift along the winding shores,

When favoring breezes deigned to blow

The square sail of the gundelow

And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel

Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,

Told how the Indian hordes came down

At midnight on Concheco town,

And how her own great-uncle bore

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.

Recalling, in her fitting phrase,

So rich and picturesque and free

(The common unrhymed poetry

Of simple life and country ways),

The story of her early days, --

She made us welcome to her home;

Old hearths grew wide to give us room;

We stole with her a frightened look

At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,

The fame whereof went far and wide

Through all the simple country side;

We heard the hawks at twilight play,

The boat-horn on Piscataqua,

The loon's weird laughter far away;

We fished her little trout-brook, knew

What flowers in wood and meadow grew,

What sunny hillsides autumn-brown

She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,

Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,

The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,

And heard the wild-geese calling loud

Beneath the gray November cloud.

Then, haply, with a look more grave,

And soberer tone, some tale she gave

From painful Sewel's ancient tome,

Beloved in every Quaker home,

Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,

Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, --

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! --

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,

And water-butt and bread-cask failed,

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued

His portly presence, mad for food,

With dark hints muttered under breath

Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,

To be himself the sacrifice.

Then, suddenly, as if to save

The good man from his living grave,

A ripple on the water grew,

A school of porpoise flashed in view.

"Take, eat," he said, "and be content;

These fishes in my stead are sent

By Him who gave the tangled ram

To spare the child of Abraham."

Our uncle, innocent of books,

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,

The ancient teachers never dumb

Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.

In moons and tides and weather wise,

He read the clouds as prophecies,

And foul or fair could well divine,

By many an occult hint and sign,

Holding the cunning-warded keys

To all the woodcraft mysteries;

Himself to Nature's heart so near

That all her voices in his ear

Of beast or bird had meanings clear,

Like Apollonius of old,

Who knew the tales the sparrows told,

Or Hermes, who interpreted

What the sage cranes of Nilus said;

A simple, guileless, childlike man,

Content to live where life began;

Strong only on his native grounds,

The little world of sights and sounds

Whose girdle was the parish bounds,

Whereof his fondly partial pride

The common features magnified,

As Surrey hills to mountains grew

In White of Selborne's loving view, --

He told how teal and loon he shot,

And how the eagle's eggs he got,

The feats on pond and river done,

The prodigies of rod and gun;

Till, warming with the tales he told,

Forgotten was the outside cold,

The bitter wind unheeded blew,

From ripening corn the pigeons flew,

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink

Went fishing down the river-brink.

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,

Peered from the doorway of his cell;

The muskrat plied the mason's trade,

And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;

And from the shagbark overhead

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer

And voice in dreams I see and hear, --

The sweetest woman ever Fate

Perverse denied a household mate,

Who, lonely, homeless, not the less

Found peace in love's unselfishness,

And welcome wheresoe'er she went,

A calm and gracious element,

Whose presence seemed the sweet income

And womanly atmosphere of home, --

Called up her girlhood memories,

The huskings and the apple-bees,

The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,

Weaving through all the poor details

And homespuun warp of circumstance

A golden woof-thread of romance.

For well she kept her genial mood

And simple faith of maidenhood;

Before her still a cloud-land lay,

The mirage loomed across her way;

The morning dew, that dries so soon

With others, glistened at her noon;

Through years of toil and soil and care,

From glossy tress to thin gray hair,

All unprofaned she held apart

The virgin fancies of the heart.

Be shame to him of woman born

Who hath for such but thought of scorn.

There, too, our elder sister plied

Her evening task the stand beside;

A full, rich nature, free to trust,

Truthful and almost sternly just,

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,

And make her generous thought a fact,

Keeping with many a light disguise

The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best

That Heaven itself coud give thee, -- rest,

Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!

How many a poor one's blessing went

With thee beneath the low green tent

Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part

Of all she saw, and let her heart

Against the household bosom lean,

Upon the motley-braided mat

Our yougest and our dearest sat,

Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,

Now bathed in the unfading green

And holy peace of Paradise.

Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,

Or from the shade of saintly palms,

Or silver reach of river calms,

Do those large eyes behold me still?

With me one little year ago: --

The chill weight of the winter snow

For months upon her grave has lain;

And now, when summer south-winds blow

And brier and harebell bloom again,

I tread the pleasant paths we trod,

I see the violet-sprinkled sod

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak

The hillside flowers she loved to seek,

Yet following me where'er I went

With dark eyes full of love's content.

The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills

The air with sweetness; all the hills

Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;

But still I wait with ear and eye,

For something gone which should be nigh,

A loss in all familiar things,

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,

Am I not richer than of old?

Safe in thy immortality,

What change can reach the wealth I hold?

What chnce can mar the pearl and gold

Thy love hath left in trust with me?

And while in late life's late afternoon,

Where cool and long the shadows grow,

I walk to meet the night that soon

Shall shape and shadow overflow,

I cannot feel that thou art far,

Since near at need the angels are;

And when the sunset gates unbar,

Shall I not see thee waiting stand,

And, white against the evening star,

The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,

The master of the local school

Held at the fire his favored place,

Its warm glow lit a laughing face

Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared

The uncertain prophecy of beard.

He teased the mitten-blinded cat,

Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,

Sang songs, and told us what befalls

In classic Dartmouth's college halls.

Born the wild Northern hills among,

From whence his yeoman father wrung

By patient toil subsistence scant,

Not competence and yet not want,

He early gained the power to pay

His cheerful, self-reliant way;

Could doff at ease his scholar's gown

To peddle wares from town to town;

Or through the long vacation's reach

In lonely lowland districts teach,

Where all the droll experience found

At stranger hearths in boarding round,

The moonlit skater's keen delight,

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,

The rustic party, with its rough

Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff,

And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,

His winter task a pastime made.

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein

He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,

Or held the good dame's winding-yarn,

Or mirth-provoking versions told

Of classic legends rare and old,

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome

Had all the commonplace of home,

And little seemed at best the odds

'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;

Where Pindus-born Arachthus took

The guise of any grist-mill brok,

And dread Olympus at his will

Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;

But at his desk he had the look

And air of one who wisely schemed,

And hostage from the future took

In trainëd thought and lore of book.

Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he

Shall Freedom's young apostles be,

Who, following in War's bloody trail,

Shall every lingering wrong assail;

All chains from limb and spirit strike,

Uplift the black and white alike;

Scatter before their swift advance

The darkness and the ignorance,

The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,

Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,

Made murder pastime, and the hell

Of prison-torture possible;

The cruel lie of caste refute,

Old forms remould, and substitute

For Slavery's lash the freeman's will,

For blind routine, wise-handed skill;

A school-house plant on every hill,

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence

The quick wires of intelligence;

Till North and South together brought

Shall own the same electric thought,

In peace a common flag salute,

And, side by side in labor's free

And unresentful revalry,

Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.

Unmarked by time, and yet not young,

The honeyed music of her tongue

And words of meekness scarcely told

A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,

Its milder features dwarded beside

Her unbent will's majestic pride.

She sat among us, at the test,

A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,

Rebuking with her cultured phrase

Our homeliness of words and ways.

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash,

Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;

And under low brows, black with night,

Rayed out at times a dangerous light;

The sharp heat-lightnings of her face

Presaging ill to him whom Fate

Condemned to share her love or hate.

A woman tropical, intense

In thought and act, in soul and sense,

She blended in a like degree

The vixen and the devotee,

Revealing with each freak of feint

The temper of Petruchio's Kate,

The raptures of Siena's saint.

Her tapering hand and rounded wrist

Had facile power to form a fist;

The warm, dark languish of her eyes

Was never safe from wrath's surprise.

Brows saintly calm and lips devout

Knew every change of scowl and pout;

And the sweet voice had notes more high

And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,

What convent-gate has held its lock

Against the challenge of her knock!

Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares,

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stair,

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,

Or startling on her desert throne

The crazy Queen of Lebanon

With claims fantastic as her own,

Her tireless feet have held their way;

And still, unrestful. bowed, and gray,

She watches under Eastern skies,

With hope each day renewed and fresh,

The Lord's quick coming in the flesh,

Whereof she dreams and prophecies!

Where'er her troubled path may be,

The Lord's sweet pity with her go!

The outward wayward life we see,

The hidden springs we may not know.

Nor is it given us to discern

What threads the fatal sisters spun,

Through what ancestral years has run

The sorrow with the woman born,

What forged her cruel chain of moods,

What set her feet in solitudes,

And held the love within her mute,

What mingled madness in the blood

A life-long discord and annoy,

Water of tears with oil of joy,

And hid within the folded bud

Peversities of flower and fruit.

It is not ours to separate

The tangled skien of will and fate,

To show what metes and bounds should stand

Upon the soul's debatable land,

And between choice and Providence

Divide the circle of events;

But He who knows our frame is just,

Merciful and compassionate,

And full of sweet assurances

And hope for all the language is,

That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,

Sent out a dull and duller glow,

The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,

Ticking its weary circuit through,

Pointed with mutely warning sign

Its black hand to the hour of nine.

That sign the pleasant circle. broke:

My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,

Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray

And laid it tenderly away;

Then roused himself to safely cover

The dull red brands with ashes over,

And while, with care, our mother laid

The work aside, her steps she stayed

One moment, seeking to express

Her grateful sense of happiness

For food and shelter, warmth and health,

And love's contentment more than wealth,

With simple wishes (not the weak,

Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,

But such as warm the generous heart,

O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)

That none might lack, that bitter night,

For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard

The wind that round the gables roared,

With now and then a ruder shock,

Which made our very bedsteads rock.

We heard the loosened clapboards tost,

The board-nails snapping in the frost;

And on us, through the unplastered wall,

Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.

But sleep stole on, as sleep will do

When hearts are light and life is new;

Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,

Till in the summer-land of dreams

They softened to the sound of streams,

Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,

And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

Next morn we wakened with the shout

Of merry voices high and clear;

And saw the teamsters drawing near

To break the drifted highways out.

Down the long hillside treading slow

We saw the half-buried oxen go,

Shaking the snow from heads uptost,

Their straining nostrils white with frost.

Before our door the stragglins train

Drew up, an added team to gain.

The elders threshed their hands a-cold,

Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes

From lip to lip; the younger folks

Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling rolled,

Then toiled again the cavalcade

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,

And woodland paths that wound between

Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.

From every barn a team afoot,

At every house a new recruit,

Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,

Haply the watchful young men saw

Sweet doorway pictures of the curls

And curious eyes of merry girls,

Lifting their hands in mock defence

Against the snow-ball's compliments,

And reading in each missive tost

The charm with Eden never lost.

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound;

And, following where the teamsters led,

The wise old Doctor went his round,

Just pausing at our door to say,

In the brief autocratic way

Of one who, prompt at Duty's call

Was free to urge her claim on all,

That some poor neighbor sick abed

At night our mother's aid would need.

For, one in generous thought and deed

What mattered in the sufferer's sight

The Quaker matron's inward light,

The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed?

All hearts confess the saints elect

Who, twain in faith, in love agree,

And melt not in an acid sect

The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed

Since the great world was heard from last.

The Almanac we studied o'er,

Read and reread our little store

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;

One harmless novel, mostly hid

From younger eyes, a book forbid,

And poetry (or good or bad,

A single book was all we had),

Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,

A stranger to the heathen Nine,

Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,

The wars of David and the Jews.

At last the flourndering carrier bore

The village paper to our door.

Lo! broadening outward as we read,

To warmer zones the horizon spread;

In panoramic length unrolled

We saw the marvels that it told.

Before us passed the painted Creeks,

And daft McGregor on his raids

In Costa Rica's everglades.

And up Taygetos winding slow

Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,

A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!

Welcome to us its week-old news,

Its corner for the rustic Muse

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,

Its record, mingling in a breath

The wedding bell and dirge of death:

Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,

The latest culprit sent to jail;

Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,

Its vendue sales and goods at cost,

And traffic calling loud for gain.

We felt the stir of hall and street,

The pulse of life that round us beat;

The chill embargo of the snow

Was melted in the genial glow;

Wide swung again our ice-locked door,

And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look

And folded wings of ashen gray

And voice of echoes far away,

The brazen covers of thy book;

The weird palimpsest old and vast,

Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;

Where, closely mingling, pale and glow

The characters of joy and woe;

The monographs of outlived years,

Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,

Green hills of life that slope to death,

And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees

Shade off to mournful cypresses,

With the white amaranths underneath.

Even while I look, I can but heed

The restless sands' incessant fall,

Importunate hours that hours succeed

Each clamorous with its own sharp need,

And duty keeping pace with all.

Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;

I hear again the voice that bids

The dreamer leave his dream midway

For larger hopes and graver fears:

Life greatens in these later years,

The century's aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,

The wordling's eyes shall gather dew,

Dreaming in throngful city ways

Of winter joys his boyhood knew;

And dear and early friends -- the few

Who yet remain -- shall pause to view

These Flemish pictures of old days;

Sit with me by the homestead hearth

And stretch the hands of memory forth

To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!

And thanks untraced to lips unknown

Shall greet me like the odors blown

From unseen meadows newly mown,

Or lilies floating in some pond,

Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;

The traveller owns the grateful sense

Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,

And, pausing takes with forehead bare

The benediction of the air.

John Greenleaf Whittier