1824.

FAME

Ah Fate, cannot a man
  Be wise without a beard? 
East, West, from Beer to Dan,
  Say, was it never heard
That wisdom might in youth be gotten,
Or wit be ripe before ’t was rotten?

He pays too high a price
  For knowledge and for fame
Who sells his sinews to be wise,
  His teeth and bones to buy a name,
And crawls through life a paralytic
To earn the praise of bard and critic.

Were it not better done,
  To dine and sleep through forty years;
Be loved by few; be feared by none;
  Laugh life away; have wine for tears;
And take the mortal leap undaunted,
Content that all we asked was granted?

But Fate will not permit
  The seed of gods to die,
Nor suffer sense to win from wit
  Its guerdon in the sky,
Nor let us hide, whate’er our pleasure,
The world’s light underneath a measure.

Go then, sad youth, and shine;
  Go, sacrifice to Fame;
Put youth, joy, health upon the shrine,
  And life to fan the flame;
Being for Seeming bravely barter
And die to Fame a happy martyr.

1824.

THE SUMMONS

A sterner errand to the silken troop
Has quenched the uneasy blush that warmed my cheek;
I am commissioned in my day of joy
To leave my woods and streams and the sweet sloth
Of prayer and song that were my dear delight,
To leave the rudeness of my woodland life,
Sweet twilight walks and midnight solitude
And kind acquaintance with the morning stars
And the glad hey-day of my household hours,
The innocent mirth which sweetens daily bread,
Railing in love to those who rail again,
By mind’s industry sharpening the love of life—­
Books, Muses, Study, fireside, friends and love,
I loved ye with true love, so fare ye well!

I was a boy; boyhood slid gayly by
And the impatient years that trod on it
Taught me new lessons in the lore of life. 
I’ve learned the sum of that sad history
All woman-born do know, that hoped-for days,
Days that come dancing on fraught with delights,
Dash our blown hopes as they limp heavily by. 
But I, the bantling of a country Muse,
Abandon all those toys with speed to obey
The King whose meek ambassador I go.

1826.

THE RIVER

And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,—­
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father’s fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went. 
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.