LE ROSSIGNOL

IKE to a swarm of birds, with jarring cries

L

Descend on me my swarming memories;

Light 'mid the yellow leaves, that shake and sigh,

Of the bowed alder - that is even I!

Brooding its shadow in the violet

Unprofitable river of Regret,

They settle screaming. Then the evil sound,

By the moist wind's impatient hushing drowned,

Dies by degrees, till nothing more is heard

Save the long singing of a single bird,

Save the clear voice-O singer, sweetly done!
Warbling the praises of the Absent One.
And in the silence of a summer night
Sultry and splendid, by a late moon's light
That sad and sallow peers above the hill,
The humid hushing wind that ranges still
Rocks to a whispered sleep-song languidly
The bird lamenting and the shivering tree.

INSPIRATION

INSPIRATION, splendid, dominant,

"Egeria with the lightsome eyes profound,

Sudden Erato, Genius quick to grant,

Old picture Angel of the gilt background!

Muse.-ay, whose voice is powerful indeed,
Since in the first-come brain it makes to grow
Thick as some dusty yellow roadside weed,
A gardenful of poems none did sow!

Dove, Holy Ghost, Delirium, Sacred Fire,
Transporting Passion,-seasonable queen!-
Gabriel and lute, Latona's son and lyre,—
Ay, Inspiration, summoned at sixteen!

What we have need of, we, the poets true,
That not believe in gods, and yet revere,

That have no halo, hold no golden clue,

For whom no Beatrix leaves her radiant sphere,

We that do chisel words like chalices,

And moving verses shape with unmoved mind, Whom wandering in groups by evening seas,

In musical converse ye scarce shall find,—

What we need is, in midnight hours dim-lit,

Sleep daunted, knowledge earned,-more knowledge still!

Is Faust's brow, of the woodcuts, sternly knit,

Is stubborn Perseverance, and is Will!

Is Will eternal, holy, absolute,

That grasps

as doth a noble bird of prey The steaming flanks of the foredoomèd bruteIts project, and with it- skyward, away!

What we need, we, is fixedness intense,

Unequaled effort, strife that shall not cease; Is night, the bitter night of labor, whence Arises, sun-like, slow, the Masterpiece!

Let our inspired hearts, by an eye-shot tined,
Sway with the birch-tree to all winds that blow,
Poor things! Art knows not the divided mind.
Speak Milo's Venus, is she stone or no?

We therefore, carve we with the chisel thought
The pure block of the beautiful, and gain
From out the marble cold where it was not,
Some starry-chiton'd statue without stain,

That one far day, posterity, new morn,
Enkindling with a golden-rosy flame

Our work, new Memnon, shall to ears unborn
Make quiver in the singing air our name!

The above translations are all by Gertrude Hall. .

F

JONES VERY

(1803-1880)

A parallel were sought from nature in describing a poet like Jones Very, the hermit-thrush might well be named. His life had the seclusion of that withdrawn chanter in the woods, his song had the shy removed quality and the spiritual note of that most ethereal of bird-musicians. A New-Englander, a transcendentalist, naturally affiliating with men

like Channing and Emerson, Very walked by the inner light, and obeyed the vision. His unworldliness had in it something almost uncanny. He made a unique impression upon observant souls. "American soil," says James Freeman Clarke, "has produced no other man like Jones Very."

JONES VERY

In the case of one with whom the life of the spirit is all-important, the outward events of his career seem of little moment: they were uneventful with Very. He was born August 28th, 1813, at Salem, Massachusetts; and his father was a sea-captain, at a time when men of that ancient profession were among the most respected citizens of the community, possessed of character and culture. He made several voyages with his father; attended school in Salem, and in New Orleans, Louisiana; and by teaching, saved money enough to go to Harvard, where he was graduated in 1836, remaining as a tutor of Greek for two years more. He then studied theology, and was licensed a Unitarian preacher of the Cambridge Association in 1843. But he never took a pastorate: he returned to his native town and led a retired life, contributing occasionally to the Salem Gazette, the Christian Register, and other papers representing his denomination. He read literature, ancient and modern; but his main interest was always in religious and ethical themes. When he felt a call to do so, he accepted an invitation to preach. If he deemed that God wished him to go to Boston for converse with Dr. Channing, thither he went. His smallest acts were in response to heavenly guidance.

In 1839 appeared the volume of Very's essays and poems. The former are scholarly and thoughtful; but the chief interest centres in

the verse, posthumous editions of which were published in 1883 and 1886. In few books by an American poet has the note been more distinctive. Very's sonnets and lyrics are the musings of a mystic. The sonnets in particular express the history of the poet's religious nature. In the lyrics there is less subjectivity, more variety of form, and a wider range of theme; so that this portion of his work, as a whole, will have stronger attraction for the general reader. But in the irregular Shakespearean sonnet, with an extra syllable in the final line, Very has made his most intimate revelation of himself. He seems to have found this form peculiarly suited to the expression of his inmost ideals. Such verses introspective, subtle, delicate, dealing with the loftiest aspirations of the human soul- cannot be expected to make a wide appeal. But they embody a remarkable poetic sentiment of the life of the spirit, and will always be precious to those for whom they were written. Lowell admired and loved Very's poetry; it has always found critical appreciation. Few poets had a deeper feeling for nature-nature as the garment of God — than this Salem recluse. He is at his happiest when breathing out his spiritual thought in descriptions which note affectionately, with a lover's constant eye, the grass, the tree, and the flower, and interpret the insect on the earth, and the clouds of the sky, as symbols of the One, maker of them all. When he died in his native town on May 8th, 1880, there were those who felt that one of the choicest of that noteworthy group of New England idealists had been removed.

[All the following poems are copyrighted, and they are republished here by permission of the family of Mr. Very.]

I

THE TREE

LOVE thee when thy swelling buds appear,
And one by one their tender leaves unfold,

As if they knew that warmer suns were near,
Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold;
And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen,
To veil from view the early robin's nest,

I love to lie beneath thy waving screen

With limbs by summer's heat and toil opprest:
And when the autumn winds have stript thee bare,
And round thee lies the smooth untrodden snow,
When naught is thine that made thee once so fair.
I love to watch thy shadowy form below,
And through thy leafless arms to look above

On stars that brighter beam when most we need their love.

D

AY!

DAY

I lament that none can hymn thy praise
In fitting strains, of all thy riches bless;
Though thousands sport them in thy golden rays,

Yet none like thee their Maker's name confess. Great fellow of my being! woke with me,

Thou dost put on thy dazzling robes of light, And onward from the East go forth to free

Thy children from the bondage of the night: I hail thee, pilgrim! on thy lonely way,

Whose looks on all alike benignant shine;
A child of light, like thee, I cannot stay,

But on the world I bless must soon decline,-
New rising still, though setting to mankind,
And ever in the eternal West my dayspring find.

I

NIGHT

THANK thee, Father, that the night is near
When I this conscious being may resign:
Whose only task thy words of love to hear,
And in thy acts to find each act of mine;
A task too great to give a child like me,-
The myriad-handed labors of the day
Too many for my closing eyes to see,

Thy words too frequent for my tongue to say:
Yet when thou see'st me burthened by thy love,
Each other gift more lovely then appears,
For dark-robed Night comes hovering from above,
And all thine other gifts to me endears:
And while within her darkened couch I sleep,
Thine eyes untired above will constant vigils keep.

THE DEAD

SEE them: crowd on crowd they walk the earth,-
Dry leafless trees no autumn wind laid bare;
And in their nakedness find cause for mirth,

And all unclad would winter's rudeness dare:

No sap doth through their clattering branches flow, Whence springing leaves and blossoms bright appear;