Early Letters To John S. Dwight - Chapter 31

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_ Early Letters To John S. Dwight
Chapter XXXI

N.Y., April 12th, 1846.

My dear Friend,--I meant to have given you some verses when you were here as you asked, but I forgot it. Now I send this. It is so different from Wentworth Higginson's that I do not feel as if the same road had been run over by us[1]. And as each Phalanx will be a centre of innumerable railroads in the age of harmony, why not its paper of paper railroads now? This was written in Concord some time since.

[Footnote 1: This refers to a poem by T.W. Higginson with the same title, which had been printed in the Harbinger, a few weeks previously.]

Since you went I have done little but study French and Italian. We meet Cranch, and his wife of course, three times a week at that, and I drop into his studio now and then. To-day I was there, and he was hard at work upon a sunset composition, which he hopes to finish for the exhibition of the Boston Athenaeum. He has sent the large landscape, "The Summer Shower," and "The Old Mill with the Bridge and Ducks," to the National Academy, which exhibition opens this week. He has sold one in Washington to a member of Congress for $100, and if he can continue to improve as rapidly as he has for a year or two past he will be a fine painter.

These soft, gushing spring days make me yearn for the country. I shall hope to be emancipated from Masters and Mistresses by the first or middle of May and take my place with the other cattle in the pastures. When I do not exactly know. Let me hear from you and about the Farm and its prospects. Burrill's eyes have given out again. He is bound head and foot, for his ankle has a habit of breaking down occasionally. Rest and warm weather and the country may strengthen them all. Give my love

"und vergiss nicht euer treur,"

G.W.C.

THE RAILROAD

A bright November day. The morning light
Shone through the city's mist against my eyes,
Soft, chiding them from sleep. Unfolding them
They raised their lids and--gave me a new day.

A day not freshly breaking on the fields,
And waking with a morning kiss the streams
That slept beneath the vapor, but on streets,
Piles of great majesty and human skill,
Stone veins where human passion swiftly runs.
Thereon I gazed with tenderness and awe,
Remembering the heavy debt I owed
To the dim arches of the dingy bricks,
Which sternly smiled upon my youngest years
And gravely greeted now, as through the crowd
By all unknown and knowing none, I passed.

The warning whistle thrilled the misty air,
And stately forth we rode into the morn,
Subduing airy distance silently;
The shadow glided by us on the grass,
The sole companion of our lonely speed,
And all the landscape changing as we went,
A shifting picture, of like hues and forms
But ever various, trees, rocks, and hills,
Rising sublime and stretching pastoral--
How like a noble countenance which shows
Endless expression and eternal charm.

I leaned against the window as we went.
And saw the city mist recede afar,
And lost the busy hum which haunts the mind
As a voice inarticulate, the tone
Of many men whose mouths speak distinct words
Which blend in grim confusion, till the sound
Like a vague aspiration climbs the sky.
The muffled murmur of the iron wheels,
And the sharp tinkle of the hurried bell,
And a few words between were all the sounds
Which peopled that else silent morning air.

A busy city darting o'er the plains
Across the turnpikes and through hawthorne lanes,
O'er wide morasses and profound ravines--
Through stately woods where red deer only run,
And grassy lawn and farmer's planted field--
Was that swift train that flashed along the hills,
And smoked through sloping valleys, and surprised
The mild-eyed milk-maid with her morning pail.

I dreamed my dreams until the village lay
White in the morning light, and holding up
Its modest steeples in the crystal air.
A moment, and the picture changed no more,
But wore a serious constancy and showed
Its bare-boughed trees immovable. I rose,
And stepping from the train, it glided on,
Sweeping around the hill; the whistle shrill
Rang through the stricken air. A moment more
It rolled along the iron out of sight. _

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