An Ode, On the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell
Late Servant to his Majesty, and Organist
of the Chapel Royal, and of St. Peter's
Westminster
I
MARK
how the Lark and Linnet Sing,
With rival Notes
They strain their warbling Throats,
To welcome in the Spring.
But in the close of Night,
When Philomel begins her Heav'nly lay,
They cease their mutual spite,
Drink in her Music with delight,
And list'ning and silent, and silent and list'ning,
And list'ning and silent obey.
II
So
ceas'd the rival Crew when Purcell came,
They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame.
Struck dumb they all admir'd the God-like Man,
The God-like Man,
Alas, too soon retir'd,
As He too late began.
We beg not Hell, our Orpheus to restore,
Had He been there,
Their Sovereign's fear
Had sent Him back before.
The pow'r of Harmony too well they know,
He long e'er this had Tun'd their jarring Sphere,
And left no Hell below.
III
The
Heav'nly Choir, who heard his Notes from high,
Let down the Scale of Music from the Sky:
They handed him along,
And all the way He taught, and all the way they Sung.
Ye Brethren of the Lyre, and tuneful Voice,
Lament his Lot: but at your own rejoice.
Now live secure and linger out your days,
The Gods are pleas'd alone with Purcell's Lays,
Nor know to mend their Choice.
--John Dryden
Ode
Inscribed to W.H. Channing
THOUGH
loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honeyed thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If
I refuse
My study for their politic,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But
who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!
Or
who, with accent bolder
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the Negro-holder.
The
God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men;--
Small bat and wren
House in the oak:--
If earth-fire cleave
The upheaved land, and bury the folk,
The southern crocodile would grieve.
Virtue palters; Right is hence;
Freedom praised, but hid;
Funeral eloquence
Rattles the coffin lid.
What
boots thy zeal,
O glowing friend,
That would indignant rend
The northland from the south?
Wherefore? to what good end?
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still;--
Things are of the snake.
The
horseman serves the horse
The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to weave, and corn to grind;
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
There
are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled,--
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
'Tis
fit the forest fall,
The steep be graded,
The mountain tunneled,
The sand shaded,
The orchard planted,
The glebe tilled,
The prairie granted
The steamer built.
Let
man serve law for man;
Live for friendship, live for love,
For truth's and harmony's behoof;
The state may follow how it can,
As Olympus follows Jove.
Yet
do not I implore
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods,
Nor did the unwilling senator
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.
Everyone to his chosen work--
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Round they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd;--
The overgod
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples,--
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races,
Black by white faces,--
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.
The
Cossack eats Poland,
Like stolen fruit;
Her last noble is ruined,
Her last poet mute;
Straight, into double band
The victors divide;
Half for freedom strike and stand;--
The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for
France
(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington
in Paris, on Decoration Day,
May 30, 1916.)
I
Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When -- - with sweet flowers of our
New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty
years made gray -- -
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.
Those to preserve their country's greatness
died;
But by the death of these
Something that we can look upon with
pride
Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied
Can sneerers triumph in the charge they
make
That from a war where Freedom was at
stake
America withheld and, daunted, stood
aside.
II
Be they remembered here with each reviving
spring,
Not only that in May, when life is loveliest,
Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the
disputed crest
Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering,
In that fine onslaught that no fire
could halt,
Parted impetuous to their first assault;
But that they brought fresh hearts and
springlike too
To that high mission, and 'tis meet
to strew
With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest
rose
The cenotaph of those
Who in the cause that history most endears
Fell in the sunny morn and flower of
their young years.
III
Yet sought they neither recompense nor
praise,
Nor to be mentioned in another breath
Than their blue coated comrades whose
great days
It was their pride to share -- - ay,
share even to the death!
Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered
thanks
(Seeing they came for honor, not for
gain),
Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,
Gave them that grand occasion to excel,
That chance to live the life most free
from stain
And that rare privilege of dying well.
IV
O friends! I know not since that war
began
From which no people nobly stands aloof
If in all moments we have given proof
Of virtues that were thought American.
I know not if in all things done and
said
All has been well and good,
Or if each one of us can hold his head
As proudly as he should,
Or, from the pattern of those mighty
dead
Whose shades our country venerates to-day,
If we've not somewhat fallen and somewhat
gone astray.
But you to whom our land's good name
is dear,
If there be any here
Who wonder if her manhood be decreased,
Relaxed its sinews and its blood less
red
Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed,
Be proud of these, have joy in this
at least,
And cry: "Now heaven be praised
That in that hour that most imperilled
her,
Menaced her liberty who foremost raised
Europe's bright flag of freedom, some
there were
Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,
Came back the generous path of Lafayette;
And when of a most formidable foe
She checked each onset, arduous to stem
-- -
Foiled and frustrated them -- -
On those red fields where blow with
furious blow
Was countered, whether the gigantic
fray
Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot,
Accents of ours were in the fierce melee;
And on those furthest rims of hallowed
ground
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge
expires,
When the slain bugler has long ceased
to sound,
And on the tangled wires
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles,
stops,
Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron
showers: -- -
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few
brave drops;
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops
were ours."
V
There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness,
Their bayonets toward the beckoning
frontiers,
They lie -- - our comrades -- - lie
among their peers,
Clad in the glory of fallen warriors,
Grim clusters under thorny trellises,
Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores,
Leaves that made last year beautiful,
still strewn
Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath
the changing moon;
And earth in her divine indifference
Rolls on, and many paltry things and
mean
Prate to be heard and caper to be seen.
But they are silent, calm; their eloquence
Is that incomparable attitude;
No human presences their witness are,
But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued,
And showers and night winds and the
northern star.
Nay, even our salutations seem profane,
Opposed to their Elysian quietude;
Our salutations calling from afar,
From our ignobler plane
And undistinction of our lesser parts:
Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are
twice blest, brave hearts.
Double your glory is who perished thus,
For you have died for France and vindicated
us.
--Alan Seeger