O Thou of home the guardian Lar, And, when our earth hath wandered far Into the cold, and deep snow covers The walks of our New England lovers, Their sweet secluded evening-star! ’T was with thy rays the English Muse Ripened her mild domestic hues; ’T was by thy flicker that she conned The fireside wisdom that enrings With light from heaven familiar things; By thee she found the homely faith In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay’th, When Death, extinguishing his torch, Gropes for the latch-string in the porch; The love that wanders not beyond His earliest nest, but sits and sings While children smooth his patient wings: Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs Life in the withered words! how swift recede Time’s shadows! and how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As when upon the anvils of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet’s thought! Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, The aspirations unattained, The rhythms so rathe and delicate, They bent and strained And broke, beneath the sombre weight Of any airiest mortal word. What warm protection dost thou bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane! Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne By Morpheus’ daughter, she that seems Gifted upon her natal morn By him with fire, by her with dreams, Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grapes’ bewildering juice, We worship, unforbid of thee; And, as her incense floats and curls In airy spires and wayward whirls, Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery, So winds and loiters, idly free, The current of unguided talk, Now laughter-rippled, and now caught In smooth dark pools of deeper thought. Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, A sweetly unobtrusive third; For thou hast magic beyond wine, To unlock natures each to each; The unspoken thought thou canst divine: Thou fill’st the pauses of the speech With whispers that to dream-land reach, And frozen fancy-springs unchain, In Arctic outskirts of the brain; Sun of all inmost confidences, To thy rays doth the heart unclose Its formal calyx of pretences, That close against rude day’s offences, And open its shy midnight rose!* * * * *
A Winter-Evening Hymn to My Fire
More from Poet
-
From “The Biglow Papers,” No. III. GUVENER B. 1 is a sensible man; He stays to his home an’ looks arter his folks; He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An’ into nobody’s tater-patch pokes;— But John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote for Guvener B. My! ain’t it...
-
From “a Fable for Critics” THERE are truths you Americans need to be told, And it never ’ll refute them to swagger and scold; John Bull, looking o’er the Atlantic, in choler. At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; But to scorn i-dollar-try ’s what very few do, And John goes to...
-
From “a Fable for Critics” LET us glance for a moment, ’t is well worth the pains, And note what an average grave-yard contains; There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves, There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves, Horizontally there lie upright politicians, Dose-a-dose...
-
“Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.” —Letter of H. G. OTIS. IN...
-
[From “Under the Elm,” read at Cambridge, July 3, 1875, on the Hundredth Anniversary of Washington’s taking Command of the American Army.] BENEATH our consecrated elm A century ago he stood, Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood, Which redly foamèd round him but could not overwhelm The...