Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/38

6

Brownie sits in the Scotchman’s room,
 * And eats his meat and drinks his ale,

And beats the maid with her unused broom,
 * And the lazy lout with his idle flail;

But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,
 * And hies him away ere the break of dawn.

The shade of Denmark fled from the sim,
 * And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer,

The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,
 * Agrippa’s demon wrought in fear,

And the devil of Martin Luther sat By the stout monk’s side in social chat.

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
 * Who seven times crossed the deep,

Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
 * Like the nightmare in one’s sleep.

But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast The evil weight from his back at last.

But the demon that cometh day by day
 * To my quiet room and fireside nook,

Where the casement light falls dim and gray
 * On faded painting and ancient book,

Is a sorrier one than any whose names Are chronicled well by good King James.

No bearer of burdens like Caliban,
 * No runner of errands like Ariel,

He comes in the shape of a fat old man,
 * Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;

And whence he comes, or whither he goes, I know as I do of the wind which blows.

A stout old man with a greasy hat
 * Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose,

And two gray eyes enveloped in fat,
 * Looking through glasses with iron bows.

Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can, Guard well your doors from that old man!

He comes with a careless “How d’ ye do?”
 * And seats himself in my elbow-chair;

And my morning paper and pamphlet new
 * Fall forthwith under his special care,

And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat, And, button by button, unfolds his coat.

And then he reads from paper and book,
 * In a low and husky asthmatic tone,

With the stolid sameness of posture and look
 * Of one who reads to himself alone;

And hour after hour on my senses come That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.

The price of stocks, the auction sales,
 * The poet’s song and the lover’s glee,

The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,
 * The marriage list, and the jeu d’esprit,

All reach my ear in the self-same tone,— I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!

Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
 * O’er the mossy roots of some forest tree,

The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
 * Or sound of flutes o’er a moonlight sea,

Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems To float through the slumbering singer’s dreams.

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,
 * Of her in whose features I sometimes look,

As I sit at eve by her side alone,
 * And we read by turns, from the self-same book,

Some tale perhaps of the olden time, Some lover’s romance or quaint old rhyme.

Then when the story is one of woe,—
 * Some prisoner’s plaint through his dungeon-bar,

Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low
 * Her voice sinks down like a moan afar;

And I seem to hear that prisoner’s wail, And his face looks on me worn and pale.

And when she reads some merrier song,
 * Her voice is glad as an April bird’s,

And when the tale is of war and wrong,
 * A trumpet’s summons is in her words,

And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, And see the tossing of plume and spear!

Oh, pity me then, when, day by day,
 * The stout fiend darkens my parlor door;

And reads me perchance the self-same lay
 * Which melted in music, the night before,