Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861
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"And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of Nature."
Like Faustus, he was permitted to look into her deep bosom, as into the
bosom of a friend,--to find his brothers in the still wood, in the air,
and in the water,--to see himself and the mysterious wonders of his own
breast in the movements of the elements. And so he took Nature as a
figurative exponent of humanity, and extracted the symbolic truths from
her productions, and used them nobly in his Art.
Garbett, an English aesthetical writer, assures us that the _Anthemion_
bears not the slightest resemblance to the Honeysuckle or any other
plant, "being no representation of anything in Nature, but simply the
necessary result of the complete and systematic attempt to combine unity
and variety by the principle of _gradation_." But here he speaks like a
geometer, and not like an artist. He seeks rather for the resemblance of
form than the resemblance of spirit, and, failing to realize the object
of his search, he endeavors to find a cause for this exquisite effect
in pure reason. With equal perversity, Poe endeavored to persuade the
public that his "Raven" was the result of mere aesthetical deductions!
And here the old burden of our song must once again be heard: If we
would know the golden secret of the Greek Ideal, we must ourselves
first learn how to _love_ with the wisdom and chastity of old Hellenic
passion. We must sacrifice Taste and Fancy and Prejudice, whose specious
superficialities are embodied in the errors of modern Art,--we must
sacrifice these at the shrine of the true Aphrodite; else the modern
Procrustes will continue to stretch and torture Greek Lines on
geometrical beds, and the aesthetic Pharisees around us will still
crucify the Greek Ideal.
[To be continued.]
THE ROSE ENTHRONED.
It melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow
To adamant beneath the house of life:
In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go
To meet intenser strife.
And ere that fever leaves the granite veins,
Down thunders o'er the waste a torrid sea:
Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,--
Immortal foes to be.
Built by the warring elements, they rise,
The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier,
Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes
Their hideous heads uprear.
The building of the world is not for you
That glare upon each other, and devour:
Race floating after race fades out of view,
Till beauty springs from power
Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death
Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun;
The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath
Of richer life begun,--
Richer and sweeter far than aught before,
Though rooted in the grave of what has been.
Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor,
Ere she her heir shall win;
And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand
For nourishment of that which is to come:
While 'mid the ruins of the work she planned
Sits Nature, blind and dumb.
For whom or what she plans, she knows no more
Than any mother of her unborn child;
Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er
Her desolations wild.
Slowly the clamor and the clash subside:
Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue:
Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide:
The skies are veined with blue.
And life works through the growing quietness
To bring some darling mystery into form:
Beauty her fairest Possible would dress
In colors pure and warm.
Within the depths of palpitating seas
A tender tint;--anon a line of grace
Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,
The coming joy to trace;--
A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,
Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush
Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;--
A breathing, through the hush,
Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out
And give its prisoned rapture to the air;--
A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt
Is whispered everywhere.
And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies
A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose:
Through earth and sea and air a message flies,
Prophetic of the Rose.
At last a morning comes of sunshine still,
When not a dew-drop trembles on the grass;
When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill
Is like a burnished glass
Where a long-looked-for guest may lean to gaze;
When day on earth rests royally,--a crown
Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays,
From heaven let lightly down.
In golden silence, breathless, all things stand.
What answer meets this questioning repose?
A sudden gush of light and odors bland,
And, lo! the Rose! the Rose!
The birds break into canticles around;
The winds lift Jubilate to the skies:
For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground,
Love blooms in human eyes.
Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so,
In dust of low ideals rooted fast.
Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow
From truth in errors past.
What fiery fields of Chaos must be won,
What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,
What births and resurrections greet the sun,
Before the rose can bloom!
And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream,
Whereof the time that is infolds the seed,--
Some flower of light, to which the rose shall seem
A fair and fragile weed.
A BAG OF MEAL.
I often wonder what was the appearance of Saul's mother, when she walked
up the narrow aisle of the meeting-house and presented her boy's brow
for the mystic drops that sealed him with the name of Saul.
Saul isn't a common name. It is well,--for Saul is not an ordinary
man,--and--Saul is my husband.
We came in the cool of an evening upon the brink of the swift river that
flows past the village of Skylight.
The silence of a nearing experience brooded over my spirit; for Saul's
home was a vast unknown to me, and I fain would have delayed awhile its
coming.
I wonder if the primal motion of unknown powers, like electricity, for
instance, is spiral. Have you ever seen it winding out of a pair of
human eyes, knowing that every fresh coil was a spring of the soul, and
felt it fixing itself deeper and deeper in your own, until you knew that
you were held by it?
Perhaps not. I have: as when Saul turned to me in the cool of that
evening, and drew my eyes away, by the power I have spoken of, from the
West, where the orange of sunset was fading into twilight.
I have felt it otherwise. A horse was standing, surrounded by snow; the
biting winds were cutting across the common, and the blanket with which
he had been covered had fallen from him, and lay on the snow. He had
turned his head toward the place where it lay, and his eyes were fixed
upon it with such power, that, if that blanket had been endowed with one
particle of sensation, it would have got up, and folded itself, without
a murmur, around the shivering animal. Such a picture as it was! Just
then, I would have been Rosa Bonheur; but being as I was, I couldn't be
expected to blanket a horse in a crowded street, could I?
We were on the brink of the river. Saul drew my eyes away, and said,--
"You are unhappy, Lucy."
"No," I answered,--"not that."
"That does not content me. May I ask what troubles you?"
I aroused myself to reason. Saul is never satisfied, unless I assign a
reason for any mood I am in.
"Saul!" I questioned, "why do the mortals that we call Poets write,
and why do non-Poets, like ourselves, sigh over the melancholy days of
autumn, and why are we silent and thoughtful every time we think enough
of the setting sun to watch its going down?"
"Simply because the winter coming is cold and dreary, in the one
case,--and in the other, there are several reasons. Some natures dread
the darkness; others have not accomplished the wishes or the work of the
day."
"I don't think you go below the surface," I ventured. "It seems to me
that the entire reason is simple want of faith, a vague uncertainty as
to the coming back of the dried-up leaf and flower, when they perish,
and a fear, though unexpressed, that the sun is going down out of your
sight for the last time, and you would hold it a little longer."
"Would you now to-night, Lucy?"
"If I could."
My husband did not speak again for a long time, and gradually I went
back into my individuality.
We came upon an eminence outside the river-valley, and within sight of
the village.
"Is it well? do you like it?" asked Saul.
The village was nested in among the elms to such a degree that I could
only reply,--
"I am certain that I shall, when I find out what it is."
Saul stayed the impatient horse at the point where we then were, and,
indicating a height above and a depth below, told me the legend of the
naming of his village.
It was given thus:--
"A long time ago, when the soundless tread of the moccason walked
fearlessly over the bed of echoes in this valley, two warriors, Wabausee
and Waubeeneemah, came one day upon the river, at its opposite sides.
Both were, weary with the march; both wore the glory of many scalps.
Their belts were heavy with wampum, their hearts were heavy with hate.
Wabausee was down amid the dark pines that grew beside the river's
brink. Waubeeneemah was upon the high land above the river. With folded
arms and unmoved faces they stood, whilst in successive flashes across
the stream their eyes met, until Wabausee slowly opened out his
arms, and, clasping a towering tree, cried out, 'I see sky!' and he
steadfastly fixed his gaze upon the crevices of brightness that urged
their way down amid the pines over his head.
"Waubeeneemah turned his eyes over the broad valley, and answered the
cry with, 'I see light!'
"Thus they stood, one with his eyes downward, the other with his intent
on the sky, and fast and furious ran the river, swollen with the
meltings of many snows, and fierce and quick rang the battle-cries of 'I
see sky!' 'I see light!'
"A white man was near; his cabin lay just below; he had climbed a tree
above Waubeeneemah and remained a silent witness of this wordy war,
until, looking up the river, he saw a canoe that had broken from its
fastenings and was rushing down to the rapids below. It contained the
families of the two warriors, who were helplessly striving against the
swift flow of waters.
"The white man spoke, and the warriors listened. He cried, 'Look to your
canoe! and see Skylight!'
"Through the pines rushed Wabausee, and down the river-bank
Waubeeneemah, and into the tide, until they met the coming canoe, across
whose birchen bow they gave the grasp of peace, and ever since that time
Indian and white man have called this place Skylight."
"Where are the Indians now?" I could not help asking,--and yet with no
purpose, beyond expression of the thought question.
The shadows were gathering, the eyelids of the day were closing. Saul
caught me up again through the shadows into those eyes of his, and
answered,--
"Here, Lucy! I am a pale form of Waubeeneemah! I know it! I feel it now!
I sometimes ache for foemen and the wilds."
Why do I think of that time to-night on the Big Blue, far away from
Skylight, and imagine that the prairie airs are ringing with the echoes
of the great cries that are heard in my native land, "I see North!" and
"I see South!" and there is no white man of them all high enough to see
the United States?
I've wandered! Let me think,--yes, I have it! My thought began with
trying to fancy Saul's mother taking him to baptism.
She was dead, when I went to Skylight, her son's wife.
She went into the higher life at thirty-three of the threescore-and-ten
cycle of the human period. How young to die!
The longer we live, the stronger grows the wish to live. And why
not? When the circle is almost ended, and all the momentum of
threescore-and-ten is gained, why not pass the line and enter into
second childhood? What more beautiful truth in Nature's I Am, than
obedience to this law?
I've another fancy on the Big Blue to-night. It is a place for fancies.
I remember--a long time ago it seems, and yet I am not so old as Saul's
mother--the first knowledge that I had of life. I saw the sun come up
one morning out of the sea, and with it there came out of the night of
my past a consciousness. I was a soul, and held relations separate from
other souls to that risen sun and that sea. From that hour I grew into
life. A growth from the Unseen came to me with every day, born I knew
not how into my soul. I sent out nothing to people the future. All came
to me.
Is this true, this faith or fancy that God sends a tidal wave through
man, bringing with it from Heaven's ocean fragments set afloat from its
shore to lodge in our lives, until there comes an ebb, and then begin
our hopes and desires all to tend heavenward, or _elsewhere?_ Have
you never felt, do you not now feel, that there is more of yourself
_somewhere else_ than there is upon the Earth?
I like to think thus, when I see a person ill, or in sorrow, or weighed
down with weary griefs. I like to think that that which is ebbing here
is flowing and ripening into fitness for the freed soul in that land
where there shall be "no more sea."
In insanity, does the kind Lord remove _all_ from this world in order
to fit up the new life more gloriously? and are those whom most we pity
clasped the closest in the Living Arms?
It may be,--there is such comfort in possibilities.
Will Saul come to-night? I am all alone on the Big Blue. There's not
another settled claim for miles away.
The August sun drank up the moisture from our corn-fields, took out the
blood of our prairie-grasses, and God sent no cooling rains. Why?
Skylight was charmful for a while. I had forgotten Saul's assertion that
he was a pale shadow of Waubeeneemah, as we forget a dream of our latest
sleep.
At my home Aunt Carter appeared one day, and said she had "come to spend
the afternoon and stay to tea"; and she seated her amplitude of being in
Saul's favorite chair, and began to count the stitches in the heel of
the twenty-fourth stocking that she assured me "she had knit every
stitch of since the night she saw my husband lift me down at the gate
just outside the window." Her blue eyes went down deeper and deeper
into the bluer yarn her fingers were threading; and after a long pause,
during which I had forgotten her presence, and was counting out the
hours on the face of the clock which the slow hands must travel over
before Saul would be at home, suddenly she looked up and began with,--
"Mrs. Monten!"
There was something startling in her voice. I knew it was the first drop
of a coming flood, and I fortified myself. She went on repeating,--
"Mrs. Monten! I've been thinking, for a great long while, that it isn't
right for you to go on living with that man, without knowing what he is.
And I for one have got up to the point of coming right over here and
telling you of it to once."
I could not help the involuntary question of--
"Is my husband an evil man?"
"Evil! I should think he might be, when he has got"----
"Stay, Mrs. Carter!" I interrupted. "I will hear no news of my husband
that he does not choose to give me. Only one question,--Do you know of
any action that my husband has done that is wrong or wicked?"
Aunt Carter forgot her blue eyes and her bluer yarn, for she stopped her
knitting, and her eyes changed to gray in my sight, as she ejaculated,--
"He's got Indian blood in him! I should think you'd be afraid he'd scalp
you, if you didn't do just as he told you to. Everybody in Skylight is
just as sorry for you as ever they can be."
Aunt Carter paused. An open door announced my husband's unexpected
presence.
Aunt Carter rolled up her twenty-fourth twin of a stocking, and, hastily
declaring that "she'd always noticed that 't was better to visit people
when they was alone," she made all possible effort to escape before Saul
came in.
My husband an Indian! I looked at him anew. He wore the same presence
that he did when first I saw him, a twelve-month before. There was no
outward trace of the savage, as he came to welcome me; and I forgot my
thought presently, as I listened to his words.
"I am tired of this life," he said; "let us go."
"Where, Saul?"
"Anywhere, where we can breathe. I feel pent up here. I long to hunt
something wild and free as I would be. Shall it be to the prairies,
Lucy?"
"Will you live on the hunt?" I asked.
"I had not thought of that. No; I'll build you a"----And he paused.
I laughed, and added,--
"Let us have it, Saul. A wigwam?"
"Why not?"
"Why not, indeed, Saul? I am content,--let us go."
On the morrow I began the work of preparation. I was sitting upon the
carpet, where I had cast all our treasures of knowledge, in the various
guises of the printer's and binder's art, and was selecting the books
that I fondly thought would be essential to my existence, when Saul came
in.
He looked down upon me with that look that always drinks up my sight
into his, and said,--
"You are sorry to go, Lucy. I will stay."
"No, Saul, I wish to go. You shall teach me the pleasures of wild
life; and who knows but I shall like it so well that we will give up
civilization for it? Where shall I pack all these books?"
"Leave them all," he said. "We will close the house as it is, until we
come back." And I left them all at home.
In the heart of these preparations an insane desire came into my mind to
know something of Saul's ancestors, and there was but one way to know,
namely, by asking, which I would not do of human soul. Thus it came to
pass that I was driven out, between this would of my mind and wouldn't
of my soul, to search for some knowledge from inanimate things. The
last night before our departure I became particularly restless and
unsatisfied. I went to the place of burial of the villagers, where I
found duly recorded on two stones the names of Saul's parents, Richard
Monten and Agnes Monten, his wife.
There was nothing Indian there, and I went home once more to the place
that had been so happy until the spirit of inquiry grew stronger than I.
That night I watched Saul, until he grew restless, and asked me why I
did so.
I evaded direct reply, and on the morrow we were wheeling westward.
From the instant we left the line of man's art, Saul became another
person. All the romance and the glory in his nature blossomed out
gorgeously, and I grew glad and gay with him. We crossed the Missouri.
We traversed the river-land to Fort Leavenworth, amid cottonwoods, oaks,
and elms which it would have done Dr. Holmes's heart and arms good to
see and measure.
"Will you ride, Lucy? will you try the prairie?" asked Saul, the morning
following our arrival in Fort Leavenworth.
I signified my pleasure, and mounted a brave black mustang, written all
over with liberty. We had ridden out the dew of the morning, and for
miles not one word had been spoken, the only sound in the stillness
having been the hoofs' echo on the prairie-grass, when Saul rode close
to me, and, laying his hand on my pony's head, spoke in a deep, strange
voice that put my soul into expectancy, for I had heard the same once
before in my life.
"Lucy," he said, "I sometimes think that I have done a great wrong in
taking you into my keeping; for I _must_ accept these calls to wildness
that come over me at intervals."
"Have you ever been here before?" I asked.
"Twice, Lucy, I have crossed the American Desert, and lain down to sleep
at the foot of the Rocky Mountains."
"You are not going there now?" I almost gasped.
"Why not? Can't you go with me?"
Oh, how my spirit recoiled at the thought of the Desert! Wild animals
processioned through my brain in endless circles. All the stories of
Indian ferocity that ever I had heard came into my consciousness, as it
is said all the past events of life do in the drowning, and I had
no time to hesitate. The decision of my lifetime gathered into that
instant. Saul or nothing; and bravely I answered,--did I not?--when,
with brightening eyes, I said, "Let us on!"--and shaking the hand from
my saddle-bow, I gave my prairie friend leave to fly.
"Lucy! Lucy!" cried Saul, and he soon overtook me,--"Lucy, I sought you
as the thirsting man seeks water on the desert; and I _have_ sought to
bless you, almost as Hagar blessed the Angel,--almost as the devout soul
blesses God, when it finds a spring that He has made to rise out of the
sands. Having found you, I was content. I thought that I could live
always, as other men do, in the tameness of Town and Law; but I could
not, unless you refused to go with me into the Nature that my spirit
demands as a part of its own life."
"Saul, you know that you _can_ go without me,--else I should not wish
to go. I go, not because I am a necessity to you, but a free-born soul,
that wills to go where you go."
The grave Professor (for I whisper it here to-night, with only the wind
to hear, that Saul _is_ a Professor in a famed seat of learning not many
leagues away from the Atlantic coast) looked down at me with a vague,
puzzled air, for an instant, then said,--
"I see! It is so, Lucy. You have divined the secret. I am not to let you
know that I cannot live without you,--and, if you can, you are to make
me think that you only tolerate me."
"What of it? Isn't it almost true? I sometimes think, that, if ever we
are in heaven, effort to remain there will be necessary to its full joy.
We are always crying for rest, when effort is the only pleasure worth
possessing."
"You are right, and you are wrong. Let us leave mental philosophy with
mankind, who have to do with it. Just now, I am willing to confess that
I need you, and you are to do as you will. Come! let us look into this
thicket."
And leading the way, Saul rode presently under a tall cotton wood-tree,
and, lifting for me the low-hanging branches of a black-jack, I entered
an amphitheatre whose walls were leaves of living green domed in blue,
with a river-aisle winding through.
I had not time to take in all the joy of the circle, before it was
evidenced that Saul had premeditated the scene. A fire of twigs sent up
a spicy perfume. A camp-kettle stood beside the fire, and a creature
stood beside it. A yellow savage I should have said, but for my
husband's welcome. Never in our home library did brother-professor ever
receive warmer grasp of hand than I knew this Indian met. They used
words, in speaking, that were unknown to me. Presently I perceived that
an introduction was pending. That being over, the Indian, Meotona,
pointed to a swinging-chair, built for me out of the wealth of
grapevine. It was cushioned with the velvet of the buffalo-grass.
"Tell me how to thank him," I said to Saul.
Meotona immediately replied,--"Me no thank,--him," pointing to Saul.
I laid my sun-wearied head against the vine, and through half-closed
eyes watched in delicious rest the preparations for dinner. My
prairie-horse mistook my comfort for his own. I found his length of
liberty included my chair-cushion, and I gave him tuft after tuft,
until something like justice seemed to penetrate into his soul,--for he
heroically refused the last morsel, and wandered away into the next arc
of his liberty.
"If all the days are to be like this, how delicious it will be!" I said,
as Saul came to me with choice bits of prairie fare.
"Not this," he said. "Wait until we hunt the buffalo!--that wakes up the
spirit of man!"
"But I am not a man, and you must excuse me from hunting buffalo," I
could not help saying, as I slid out of the grapevine chair to the
grass, beside Saul; for verily, I believed that he had forgotten that I
was a woman, and a child of the Puritans.
No more words were spoken until our repast was over. Meotona gathered
up the furniture of our dining-room, and with us returned toward Fort
Leavenworth. The summer sun was setting when we drew near the Missouri.
I thought I had disappointed Saul. At the last moment I ventured to
ask,--
"Why did you return? I would have gone on. I wished it."
My husband's face lit into a quick smile, then gloomed as quickly, and
he said,--
"I smile at your simplicity in imagining that I ventured out, without
consulting you, for the Rocky Mountains. I frown to think that my wife
believes that I could go into danger with her, and only one right arm to
defend her. No! I went to-day to try you. I couldn't ask you within any
four-walled shelter. I wanted the wide expanse to be your only shield
before I could trust you. I wanted you to face the foe. Again I ask,
Shall we go? Answer from your own individuality, not mine."
"I will go."
It was the spirit that spoke; for neither heart nor flesh could have
braved the fancied dangers.
A week went by, and every moment of the time Saul was elate and busy,
providing for me in every possible way, devising comforts that exceeded
my imagination, remembering every idiosyncrasy that I had given
expression to in his hearing. Under the guard of the United States mail,
we left Fort Leavenworth. Meotona, the yellow savage, went with us. Oh,
the delight of those days! it comes to me now, and I almost forget that
I am alone on the Big Blue, and that those hours have gone down among
"the froth and rainbows" of the past, bearing with them a part of my
life. There were nights when I was afloat in the bark of my spirit, and
wandering up and on, until I met Half-Way Angels that bade me back to
Earth; and then I would wander away into dreams, watched by the stars
and Saul,--for in those first days he never wearied in his care. By
day I wandered through a garden of flowers untended by man, whose only
keepers were butterflies and birds. Indian faces and forms no longer
made me tremble. I grew to see beauty in them, as they dashed by the
train, intent on the hunt.
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