The Discoverer

I HAVE a little kinsman

Whose earthly summers are but three,

And yet a voyager is he

Greater than Drake or Frobisher,

Than all their peers together!

He is a brave discoverer,

And, far beyond the tether

Of them who seek the frozen Pole,

Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll.

Ay, he has travelled whither

A winged pilot steered his bark

Through the portals of the dark,

Past hoary Mimir's well and tree,

     Across the unknown sea.

Suddenly, in his fair young hour,

Came one who bore a flower,

And laid it in his dimpled hand

     With this command:

"Henceforth thou art a rover!

Thou must make a voyage far

Sail beneath the evening star,

And a wondrous land discover."

--With his sweet smile innocent

     Our little kinsman went.

Since that time no word

From the absent has been heard.

     Who can tell

How he fares, or answer well

What the little one has found

Since he left us, outward bound?

Would that he might return!

Then we should learn

By the pricking of his chart

How the skyey roadways part.

Hush! does not the baby this way bring,

To lay beside this severed curl,

     Some starry offering

Of chrysolite or pearl?

     Ah, no! not so!

We may follow on his track,

     But he comes not back.

     And yet I dare aver

He is a brave discoverer

Of climes his elders do not know.

He has more learning than appears

On the scroll of twice three thousand years,

More than in the groves is taught,

Or from furthest Indies brought;

He knows, perchance, how spirits fare,--

What shapes the angels wear,

What is their guise and speech

In those lands beyond our reach,--

     And his eyes behold

Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers told.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

The World Well Lost

THAT year? Yes, doubtless I remember still,--

  Though why take count of every wind that blows!

'T was plain, men said, that Fortune used me ill

  That year,--the self-same year I met with Rose.

Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land,

  Slipped from my hold--thus plenty comes and goes.

One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand

  (Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.

There was a war, I think; some rumor, too,

  Of famine, pestilence, fire, deluge, snows;

Things went awry. My rivals, straight in view,

  Throve, spite of all; but I,--I met with Rose.

That year my white-faced Alma pined and died:

  Some trouble vexed her quiet heart,--who knows?

Not I, who scarcely missed her from my side,

  Or aught else gone, the year I met with Rose.

Was there no more? Yes, that year life began:

  All life before a dream, false joys, light woes,--

All after-life compressed within the span

  Of that one year,--the year I met with Rose!

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Salem

A. D. 1692

SOE, Mistress Anne, faire neighbour myne,

  How rides a witche when nighte-winds blowe?

Folk saye that you are none too goode

To joyne the crewe in Salem woode,

When one you wot of gives the signe:

  Righte well, methinks, the pathe you knowe.

In Meetinge-time I watched you well,

  Whiles godly Master Parris prayed:

Your folded hands laye on your booke;

But Richard answered to a looke

That fain would tempt him unto hell,

  Where, Mistress Anne, your place is made.

You looke into my Richard's eyes

  With evill glances shamelesse growne;

I found about his wriste a hair,

And guesse what fingers tyed it there:

He shall not lightly be your prize--

  Your Master firste shall take his owne.

'T is not in nature he should be

  (Who loved me soe when Springe was greene)

A childe, to hange upon your gowne!

He loved me well in Salem Towne

Until this wanton witcherie

  His hearte and myne crept dark betweene.

Last Sabbath nighte, the gossips saye,

  Your goodman missed you from his side.

He had no strength to move, untill

Agen, as if in slumber still,

Beside him at the dawne you laye.

  Tell, nowe, what meanwhile did betide.

Dame Anne, mye hate goe with you fleete

  As driftes the Bay fogg overhead--

Or over yonder hill-topp, where

There is a tree ripe fruite shall bear

When, neighbour myne, your wicked feet

  The stones of Gallowes Hill shall tread.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Helen Keller

MUTE, sightless visitant,

From what uncharted world

Hast voyaged into Life's rude sea,

  With guidance scant;

As if some bark mysteriously

Should hither glide, with spars aslant

  And sails all furled!

In what perpetual dawn,

Child of the spotless brow,

Hast kept thy spirit far withdrawn--

Thy birthright undefiled?

What views to thy sealed eyes appear!

What voices mayst thou hear

Speak as we know not how!

Of grief and sin hast thou,

  O radiant child,

Even thou, a share? Can mortal taint

  Have power on thee unfearing

  The woes our sight, our hearing,

Learn from Earth's crime and plaint?

  Not as we see

Earth, sky, insensate forms, ourselves,

Thou seest,--but vision-free

Thy fancy soars and delves,

Albeit no sounds to us relate

  The wondrous things

Thy brave imaginings

Within their starry night create.

Pity thy unconfined

Clear spirit, whose enfranchised eyes

Use not their grosser sense?

Ah, no! thy bright intelligence

Hath its own Paradise,

A realm wherein to hear and see

Things hidden from our kind.

Not thou, not thou--'t is we

Are deaf, are dumb, are blind!

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Si Jeunesse Savait!

WHEN the veil from the eyes is lifted

  The seer's head is gray;

When the sailor to shore has drifted

  The sirens are far away.

Why must the clearer vision,

  The wisdom of Life's late hour,

Come, as in Fate's derision,

  When the hand has lost its power?

Is there a rarer being,

  Is there a fairer sphere

Where the strong are not unseeing,

  And the harvests are not sere:

Where, ere the seasons dwindle,

  They yield their due return;

Where the lamps of knowledge kindle

  While the flames of youth still burn?

O, for the young man's chances!

  O, for the old man's will!

Those flee while this advances,

  And the strong years cheat us still.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Mors Benefica

GIVE me to die unwitting of the day,

And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear:

Not swathed and couched until the lines appear

Of Death's wan mask upon this withering clay,

But as that old man eloquent made way

From Earth, a nation's conclave hushed anear;

Or as the chief whose fates, that he may hear

The victory, one glorious moment stay.

Or, if not thus, then with no cry in vain,

No ministrant beside to ward and weep,

Hand upon helm I would my quittance gain

In some wild turmoil of the waters deep,

And sink content into a dreamless sleep

(Spared grave and shroud) below the ancient main.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Invocation

THOU,--whose endearing hand once laid in sooth

Upon thy follower, no want thenceforth,

Nor toil, nor joy nor pain, nor waste of years

Filled with all cares that deaden and subdue,

Can make thee less to him--can make thee less

Than sovereign queen, his first liege, and his last

Remembered to the unconscious dying hour,--

Return and be thou kind, bright Spirit of song,

Thou whom I yet loved most, loved most of all

Even when I left thee--I, now so long strayed

From thy beholding! And renew, renew

Thy gift to me fain clinging to thy robe!

Still be thou kind, for still thou wast most dear.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Pan in Wall Street

JUST where the Treasury's marble front

  Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations;

Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont

  To throng for trade and last quotations;

Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold

  Outrival, in the ears of people,

The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled

  From Trinity's undaunted steeple,--

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain

  Sound high above the modern clamor,

Above the cries of greed and gain,

  The curbstone war, the auction's hammer;

And swift, on Music's misty ways,

  It led, from all this strife for millions,

To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days

  Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,

  And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,

I saw the minstrel, where he stood

  At ease, against a Doric pillar:

One hand a droning organ played,

  The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned

Like those of old) to lips that made

  The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

'T was Pan himself had wandered here

  A-strolling through this sordid city,

And piping to the civic ear

  The prelude of some pastoral ditty!

The demigod had crossed the seas,--

  From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,

And Syracusan times,--to these

  Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head;

  But--hidden thus--there was no doubting

That, all with crispy locks o'erspread,

  His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting;

His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,

  Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them,

And trousers, patched of divers hues,

  Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound,

  And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,

And with his goat's-eyes looked around

  Where'er the passing current drifted;

And soon, as on Trinacrian hills

 &nbps;The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,

Even now the tradesmen from their tills,

  With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

The bulls and bears together drew

  From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley,

As erst, if pastorals be true,

  Came beasts from every wooded valley;

The random passers stayed to list,--

  A boxer Aegon, rough and merry,

A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst

  With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long

  In tattered cloak of army pattern,

And Galatea joined the throng,--

  A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;

While old Silenus staggered out

  From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,

And bade the piper, with a shout,

  To strike up "Yankee Doodle Dandy!"

A newsboy and a peanut-girl

  Like little Fauns began to caper:

His hair was all in tangled curl,

  Her tawny legs were bare and taper;

And still the gathering larger grew,

  And gave its pence and crowded nigher,

While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew

  His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.

O heart of Nature, beating still

  With throbs her vernal passion taught her,--

Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,

  Or by the Arethusan water!

New forms may fold the speech, new lands

  Arise within these ocean-portals,

But Music waves eternal wands,--

  Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I,--but among us trod

  A man in blue, with legal baton,

And scoffed the vagrant demigod,

  And pushed him from the step I sat on.

Doubting I mused upon the cry,

  "Great Pan is dead!"--and all the people

Went on their ways:--and clear and high

  The quarter sounded from the steeple.

Edmund Clarence Stedman