In War Time, and Other Poems/Cobbler Keezar's Vision

The beaver cut his timber

With patient teeth that day,

The minks were fish-wards, and the crows

Surveyors of high way,--

When Keezar sat on the hillside

Upon his cobbler's form,

With a pan of coals on either hand

To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather,

He stitched and hammered and sung;

In the brook he moistened his leather,

In the pewter mug his tongue.

Well knew the tough old Teuton

Who brewed the stoutest ale,

And he paid the good-wife's reckoning

In the coin of song and tale.

The songs they still are singing

Who dress the hills of vine,

The tales that haunt the Brocken

And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,

The swift stream wound away,

Through birches and scarlet maples

Flashing in foam and spray,--

Down on the sharp-horned ledges

Plunging in steep cascade,

Tossing its white-maned waters

Against the hemlock's shade.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,

East and west and north and south;

Only the village of fishers

Down at the river's mouth;

Only here and there a clearing,

With its farm-house rude and new,

And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,

Where the scanty harvest grew.

No shout of home-bound reapers,

No vintage-song he heard,

And on the green no dancing feet

The merry violin stirred.

"Why should folk be glum," said Keezar,

"When Nature herself is glad,

And the painted woods are laughing

At the faces so sour and sad?"

Small heed had the careless cobbler

What sorrow of heart was theirs

Who travailed in pain with the births of God

And planted a state with prayers,--

Hunting of witches and warlocks,

Smiting the heathen horde,--

One hand on the mason's trowel

And one on the soldier's sword!

But give him his ale and cider,

Give him his pipe and song,

Little he cared for Church or State,

Or the balance of right and wrong.

"'Tis work, work, work," he muttered--

"And for rest a snuffle of psalms!"

He smote on his leathern apron

With his brown and waxen palms.

"O for the purple harvests

Of the days when I was young!

For the merry grape-stained maidens,

And the pleasant songs they sung

"O for the breath of vineyards,

Of apples and nuts and wine!

For an oar to row and a breeze to blow

Down the grand old river Rhine!"

A tear in his blue eye glistened

And dropped on his beard so gray.

"Old, old am I," said Keezar,

"And the Rhine flows far away!"

But a cunning man was the cobbler;

He could call the birds from the trees,

Charm the black snake out of the ledges,

And bring back the swarming bees.

All the virtues of herbs and metals,

All the lore of the woods, he knew,

And the arts of the Old World mingled

With the marvels of the New.

Well he knew the tricks of magic,

And the lapstone on his knee

Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles

Or the stone of Doctor Dee.

For the mighty master Agrippa

Wrought it with spell and rhyme

From a fragment of mystic moonstone

In the tower of Nettesheim.

To a cobbler Minnesinger

The marvellous stone gave he,

And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,

Who brought it over the sea.

He held up that mystic lapstone,

He held it up like a lens,

And he counted the long years coming,

By twenties and by tens.

"One hundred years," quoth Keezar.

"And fifty have I told

Now open the new before me,

And shut me out the old!"

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness

Rolled from the magic stone,

And a marvellous picture mingled

The unknown and the known.

Still ran the stream to the river,

And river and ocean joined;

And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line.

And cold north hills behind.

But the mighty forest was broken

By many a steepled town,

By many a white-walled farm-house,

And many a garner brown.

Turning a score of mill-wheels,

The stream no more ran free;

White sails on the winding river,

White sails on the far-off sea.

Below in the noisy village

The flags were floating gay,

And shone on a thousand faces

The light of a holiday.

Swiftly the rival ploughmen

Turned the brown earth from their shares;

Here were the farmer's treasures,

There were the craftsman's wares.

Golden the good-wife's butter,

Ruby her currant-wine;

Grand were the strutting turkeys,

Fat were the beeves and swine.

Yellow and red were the apples,

And the ripe pears russet-brown,

And the peaches had stolen blushes

From the girls who shook them down.

And with blooms of hill and wildwood,

That shame the toil of art,

Mingled the gorgeous blossoms

Of the garden's tropic heart.

"What is it I see?" said Keezar:

"Am I here or am I there?

Is it a fete at Bingen?

Do I look on Frankfort fair?

"But where are the clowns and puppets,

And imps with horns and tail?

And where are the Rhenish flagons?

And where is the foaming ale?

"Strange things, I know, will happen,--

Strange things the Lord permits;

But that droughty folk should be dolly

Puzzles my poor old wits.

"Here are smiling manly faces,

And the maiden's step is gay;

Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking,

Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.

"Here's pleasure without regretting,

And good without abuse,

The holiday and the bridal

Of beauty and of use.

"Here's a priest and there is a Quaker,

Do the cat and the dog agree?

Have they burned the stocks for oven-wood?

Have they cut down the gallows-tree?

"Would the old folk know their children?

Would they own the graceless town,

With never a ranter to worry

And never a witch to drown?"

Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar,

Laughed like a school-boy gay;

Tossing his arms above him,

The lapstone rolled away.

It rolled down the rugged hillside,

It spun like a wheel bewitched,

It plunged through the leaning willows,

And into the river pitched.

There, in the deep, dark water,

The magic stone lies still,

Under the leaning willows

In the shadow of the hill.

But oft the idle fisher

Sits on the shadowy bank,

And his dreams make marvellous pictures

Where the wizard's lapstone sank.

And still, in the summer twilights.

When the river seems to run

Out from the inner glory,

Warm with the melted sun,

The weary mill-girl lingers

Beside the charmed stream,

And the sky and the golden water

Shape and color her dream.

Fair wave the sunset gardens,

The rosy signals fly;

Her homestead beckons from the cloud,

And love goes sailing by!