THREE DECADES RossiTER Johnson. THREE DECADES READ BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THE UNiyERSITY OF ROCHESTER JUNE 19, 1894 BY ROSSITER JOHNSON. /ryo^ .6 THREE DECADES. Yerse is the gift of youth. The song-birds cease Their warblings when the springtime blossoms fall ; The summers strengthen and the fruits increase To a more sober music ; and the tall Ripe grain that tosses like a plumed pall Nods to funereal measures, till at last The sickle undermines the golden wall, The dream of glory fades into the past. And through the stubble cries the shrill autumnal blast. 4 THREE DECADES. II. Youth may be pardoned for its lack of thought, Its careless rhymes and repetitious song ; It can but know the little that is taught, It can but guess at life — and guesses wrong. But in the bubbling spirit it is strong. That stirs and strives within the blood and brain. Propels the rolling world its course along. And drags the cautious elders in its train. And scales the mountain height, and dares the furious main. III. Kot so with one who in maturer time Essays to sing for more exacting ears. He must forget his early, empty rhyme. And strike to sterner music, as he peers Along the path of thirty vanished years That lies between him and the college doors, Where he went in with all a freshman's fears. And looked amazed at Learning's awful stores. Until he sat among the gentle sophomores. THREE DECADES. 5 IV. Our lives are little, but our times are great. We come, we see, we linger, and we pass ; Weave but a single thread in web of state, Or give the field a single spear of grass. We are too often like a boyish class, Where each one stumbles through his dozen lines. And looks bewildered at the stubborn mass Of foreign words and intricate designs, — But lo ! when all is done, through all an Iliad shines. V. 'Twas thirty years ago when thirty youth Approached the House of Life, beneath whose door A sheet of lamplight hinted at the truth Of warmth within and many a generous store. A murmur now, and now a loud uproar. Seemed to proclaim the revel at its height. And, thrilled with expectation to the core. Each heart beat doubly furious at the sight. While eager, trembling feet soon crossed the threshold bright. 6 THREE DECADES. VI. What there they found, it is not mine to say. One door there is that shows a welcoming spark To those who come ; for those who go away There is another door, of little mark, Forever open but forever dark ; And those who pass that portal never tell What they have seen of pleasure or of work, Or whether sadly they have fared or well. Or care to come again, or wear a different spell. VII. But from the windows of that House of Life They saw such mighty things as not befall Twice in a century : — scenes of deadly strife, Where thirty million people had their all Put at the hazard of a cannon ball ; And other scenes where Science, Genius-led, Walked through a maze of wonders, and did call The simplest peasant from his humble shed To share with her such power as kings might dream or dread. THREE DECADES. 7 VIII. They saw, while all their youthful hopes were warm, With years in sunny lines before them planned, The culmination of the mightest storm That ever gathered in a Christian land. It seemed the snapping of the final strand That binds a nation to its hearts and homes — The sudden payment of a long demand — The reaping of a whirlwind such as comes With measured tread, and muskets' glint, and roll of drums. IX. Hamlets unheard-of fifty miles away Became historic-when their streets ran blood. And gentle streams that through the meadows play. With rippling song that only sang of good. Told henceforth to the overhanging wood A tale of sorrow and unending tears, . And bore a stain that neither ebb nor flood Can wash away through all the coming years. Till Greed forget his crimes, and Sympathy her fears. THREE DECADES. Yet wisdom was not wanting to the tale, And History wrote new marvels in her age. She saw, one April morn, the glories pale Of all the naval heroes on her page. In single ship or battle-line they wage Successful warfare ; but behold at bay Fortress and iire-raft, hulk with chain and kedge, Gunboat and ram, all blazing in the fray. And all by our great sailor conquered in a day. XI. In ancient times the spirits of the slain Were said to fight again in upper air, While still their comrades struggled on the plain Or rose in ghostly ranks to join them there. But in our western Alleghanies, where The Chattanooga through its valley goes. An army clambered up the mountain stair. Plunged into clouds, and then beyond them rose, And crossed the yellow moon, pursuing still their foes. THREE DECADES. XII. There was one Marathon in Greece of old ; There is one Waterloo in Belgium now ; And yonder, nestled in a gentle fold Of the Blue Eidge, along a hillock's brow, Lies a great field whereon the reverent plow Follows the selfsame lines that once it drew ; For there three thousand patriots sealed their vow To be to Freedom and their country true. And made of Gettysburg a three-days' Waterloo. XIII. There, as it should be when a people rise In the true majesty of final law. Was little of the tactics of the wise Or brilliant general, neither did it draw From accident or from opponent's flaw The great result. ]^o whirl of Fortune's wheel Determined who the bitter leek should gnaw. The brains were with the hands that held the steel, And stubborn will prevailed against a fiery zeal. 10 THREE DECADES. XIV. From such, of such, for such, a great man rose, Amid the rudeness of the wondrous West, And carried all the burden of our woes With gentle words and sympathetic breast. And ever edged his wisdom with a jest. While deepened still the lines that care had worn. His finger on the people's pulses pressed, Until the burden and the heat were borne. Then vanished like a dream, — and we forever mourn. XV. The days and deeds of Eighteen-hundred-twelve Returned again when Winslow steamed away. And Yankee sailors fitted a new helve To their old battle-axe for British prey. They found a lurking thief in Cherbourg bay. And called him out one Sunday afternoon, — An English pirate in Confederate gray, — And waltzed him down to Dahlgren's liveliest tune. And marked in brilliant red this nineteenth day of June. THREE DECADES. U XVI. But not alone in war's destruction blend The glories of these decades just laid low. " He with the thunder talked as friend to friend," Said poet, of a poet, long ago. Behold where now the friendly lightnings flow From house to house, from town to town, and take Yoice, cheirograph, and features to and fro. For distant parent's, brother's, lover's sake, And cause the very accents of the dead to wake. XVII. For yellow gold, in dust, or quartz, or mass, The Forty-niner struggled round the Horn, Or crawled with ox-team through the mountain pass Where high Sierras hid the light of morn. The Sixty-niner, whirling by in scorn Upon his iron road, rolled swiftly down Through Sacramento's fields of wheat and corn. Where wide-horizoned farm and thriving town Looked to the azure sea or to the mountains brown. 12 THREE DECADES. XVIII. Then Seward bought his icebergs of the Russ, And wild Alaska was a new domain, Whence nought before had ever come to us But wolves' long howl in Campbell's sounding strain. And our explorers crossed the glacial plain, New science and new history to learn. The Yukon has its folk-lore, and the rain That falls on St. Elias soon will turn The humming wheel where now the lonely camp-fires burn. XIX. Not ours alone, but every continent Of all the five that ocean flows around, In those three daring decades was uprent With mighty heaval from the human ground. When thrones and systems felt the pulse profound Of throbbing thought and its majestic pace. As some great nation gave a forward bound. And growing Freedom won a wider place In all the hopes and plans and movements of our race. THREE DECADES. 13 XX. France from lier lethargy at last arose, And shook the nightmare Emperor from his throne, And learned new lessons from ancestral foes, And taught them something they had scarcely known — How patient industry may be the bone And life-blood of a nation, greater far Than frowning fort, or military drone, Or rifled gun, or general's blazing star ; Because it builds anew, and shames the waste of war. XXI. Last of the nations, old and strange Japan The ancient feudal system swept away. Rose to the stature of our modern man. And let the light of intellectual day Through all that bright fantastic screenery play, — Nor took alone, but something also lent Of art and cultivation as her pay For power and learning from the Occident — And found a fresh career, with energies unspent. 14 THREE DECADES. XXII. Dark were the people, and their land was dark, When Yasco sailed around their southern shore, A mighty blot upon the earth's great arc. Forbidden ground — a mystery now no more. Unroll the map, and quickly con it o'er : — ISTyassa, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Congo, Benguela, Namaqua, Darfoor, — Familiar names as those of Europe are, Revealed and lighted up by Afric's rising star. XXIII. Grandest of all, where much seems more than grand. The death of slavery in these fertile years — Kussia, Brazil, and this our own dear land, ^o longer watered with a bondman's tears. All hail Brazil ! who stands among her peers A people's empire in this western world. Where never more a single throne uprears Its shape anachronistic, blood-impearled. And Freedom's sacred flag shall never more be furled. THREE DECADES. 15 XXIV. Once to your college halls I bade farewell, And twice returned to read a simple measure, To tickle fancy with the rhythmic spell That gives an equal glow to dross and treasure ; And now a third attempt, by your good pleasure. Be this the last. And let some younger voice Hereafter wile away your evening's leisure With graceful art on themes of lighter choice, That sadden less the ear and more the heart rejoice. XXV. For I have dwelt so many years afar From this the scene of youth's delicious days. And turned so often to the evening star That dropped on you the plummet of its rays. And felt the rush, the swirl, the swift amaze, As day chased day in ever hastening flight, — I could but trace again the earlier ways, And speak once more the feelings, true but trite, Of one who knows full well 'tis time to say Good night ! 16 THREE DECADES. XXVI. A drowsy infant when your story's done — A schoolboy tinkering at his broken skate — A youth who sees the final dance begun — A lover leaning o'er a garden gate — A maiden listening for the word of fate — A soldier thinking of to-morrow's fight — A statesman conscious of expiring date — A watcher doubtful of the morning light, — I understand them all : they hate to say Good night ! GUSHING. He wrought a deed of darkness that shines in light eternal. His errand was destruction, but he builded for all time. Behooves his grateful countrymen to keep such memories vernal, When they trace the lines of history or build the poet's rhyme. 'Twas the fourth and final season of that struggle for existence When the great Republic trembled from circumference to core ; 17 18 GUSHING. When a million men were battling, o'er a thousand miles of distance, And six hundred war-ships watching a thousand leagues of shore ; When the schoolhouse was a barrack, and the flag flew from the steeple ; When women paced the hospital, and old men ran the mill ; When every throb was quickened in the pulses of the people, While the sentries walked in silence and the guns were never still. 'Twas the summer of the Wilderness, that dark and bloody thicket — The summer of Cold Harbor, of Atlanta, of Mobile — When the shadows on the hearthstone seemed to hush the very cricket. And Doubt, with somber presence, sat at every morn- ing meal. GUSHING. 19 At the little town of Plymouth sixteen hundred under Wessells Blocked the port and held the post against nine thou- sand under Hoke — Held it with their hasty earthworks and their little wooden vessels, Till the iron monster Albemarle came down the Roanoke. All day long, in heavy columns, the determined foe assaulted ; All day long the stout defenders held the lines before the town. Though their dead were piled in winrows, yet the rebels never halted, Till they reached the very muzzles of the guns that struck them down. But the Albemarle, the monster with her prow beneath the water. And her sloping sides of iron, and two-hundred-pounder balls. 20 GUSHING, Came steaming down the river, like a dragon to the slaughter, To enfilade the land-works and destroy the wooden walls. Down she came with steady purpose, of the shot and shell unheeding — Bows on, she struck the Southfield, and the Southfield was a wreck ; Drove adrift the small Miami, with her crew all torn and bleeding, And her brave commander Flusser lying dead upon the deck. And the other craft were scattered, and her guns were turned on Plymouth, Where Wessells' sixteen hundred thus far unmoved had stood. "Lo, the foe in front we baffle, but behind comes up Behemoth, And our little fleet has perished, and we are but flesh and blood." GUSHING. 31 Here the white flag of surrender — there the black flag of no quarter For a hundred Carolinians who were loyal men and true, With the oft-repeated savagery of vengeful death or tor- ture For three hundred dusky freedmen who had donned the army blue. Thus fell Plymouth, and the Albemarle returned unto her mooring, And the British blockade-runner sailed once more the Roanoke — Carried rifles, carried powder, carried bullets death-insur- ing,— Until young Lieutenant Cushing to his ship's com- mander spoke : " Be it mine to meet the monster, with a score of trusty sailors. In the blackness of the midnight, with torpedo, launch, and fall ! 23 GUSHING. River bed or wreath of glory, grim stockade with sullen jailers, Wounds or blindness, fail or triumph, life or death, I risk it all ! " Only give me first a furlough, that my sisters and my mother I may visit once again, lest I shall see them never more." In his Northern home those dear ones hide the pang they can not smother, When he hastens back to duty on the Carolina shore. In a moonless, cloudy midnight a small launch crept up the river — On her bowsprit a torpedo, in her hold a score of men. Every tongue was tied to silence, every nerve was on the quiver, Till the great hulk loomed above them, fast asleep with- in her den. CUSHINa. 23 Round about her for a rampart, slowly rising, creaking, falling, Swayed a raft of heavy logging, with the motion of the tide. Cushing's little craft backed water, to the farther shore close hauling. Then with full steam darted forward, climbed the logs, and reached her side. " Who goes there ! " a flash of lightning leaping out from that dark cover, And a mammoth shot went crashing through the launch from stem to stern. But Gushing pulled his lanyard, and the Albemarle turned over. Like a giant on his deathbed when he gives the final girn. Eighteen men were killed or captured. One with Gush- ing swam the river, While the bullets pelted round them like the drops of coming rain — 34 GUSHING. Swam the river, waded marshes, found a skiff in leafy cover. And when morning light was breaking reached the friendly fleet again. Thus he wrought the deed of darkness that shines in light eternal ! Thus his errand was destruction, when he builded for all time ! And we, his grateful countrymen, must keep such memo- ries vernal, On History's heroic page and in the household rhyme. THE INDIAN TRAIL. In days agone, where rocky cliffs Kise far above the river's vale, There was a path of doubts and if s — We called it then the Indian Trail. In ragged line, from top to base, O'er shelving crag and slippery shale. By brush and brier and jumping-place, Wound up and down the Indian Trail. No girl, though nimble as a fawn, 'No small-boy cautious as a snail, 25 26 THE INDIAN TRAIL. Ko dog, no mule, no man of brawn. Could safely tread that Indian Trail. Beyond the age of childish toy. Before the age of gun and sail, The fearless and elastic boy Alone could use the Indian Trail. 'Twas like a great commencement day, Like change from little fish to whale. From tearful March to smiling May, When first you climbed the Indian Trail. I've threaded many a devious maze, And Alpine path without a rail. Yet never felt such tipsy craze As touched me on the Indian Trail. 'Twas easy by the White Man's Path For all the lofty cliff to scale ; But boys returned from river bath Preferred to take the Indian Trail. TEE INDIAN TRAIL. 27 Our younger brothers, who'd insist Upon their rights of taggle-tail, Were shaken off and never missed When once we reached the Indian Traih And those who plundered orchard crop Regarded not the farmer's hail, But left him puzzled at the top. While they went down the Indian Trail. All this was years and years ago — To count them now would not avail — And every noble tree is low That shadowed then the Indian Trail. The beetling cliff — ah, what a sin ! — Is full of vaults for beer and ale ; The rocks are stained like toper's chin. Where flourished once our Indian Trail. They've stripped off every bush and flower, From Vincent to Deep Hollow dale ; 38 THE INDIAN TRAIL. The charm is sunk, the memory sour — There is no more an Indian Trail. Far driven from our hunting-ground On breezy hill and billowy swale, Some wander still, but some have found The skyward end of Indian Trail. Dear boys ! it takes away my breath, To think how youth and genius fail. Those grim pursuers, Time and Death, Are baffled by no Indian Trail. Life yields such comfort as it hath, But labor wears and custom stales ; I plod all day the White Man's Path, And dream at night of Indian Trails. WHEN FOOLISH WORDS. When foolish words have been forgot, And wiser memory reads between — Like some dear child's handwriting seen Half blindly through an awkward blot — How clearly runs the legend then, There's something more in friendship's faith Than careless hand or vagrant breath Can make or break with tongue or pen. Yet foolish words will have their sway, Like smoke that wraps a generous fire And forces tears and rouses ire. And seem decisive for a day. I owe your memory heavy debt, My friend of many sacred years ; But would you double these arrears, Learn also sometimes to forget. AN ISLAND LYRIC. A POEM IN TWO GAUGES. The Poet, sojourning on an Island in the Atlantic, receiveth an Order for a Poem. But the careless Editor neglecteth to tell him the Width of the Column. Therefore the Poet, anxious to Please, writeth his poem Twice over, in different gauges — which incidentally illustrateth the Elasticity of Language. NAEROW GAUGE. See the fog ! Hear the dog ! Feel the wind, How imkind- Ly it blows The wild rose. And the waves, How they roar 30 AN ISLAND LYRIC. 31 In the caves By the shore. The poor bird Never heard Such a strife In his hfe. And the fish In the dish Scarcely wish They were free To go back To the black, Angry sea. BEOAD GAUGE. Behold how Nature's mantle wraps this isle In fold on fold of gray and fleecy mist ! Hark how the canine creature doth beguile The weary hours, and never will desist ! With cruel power the blast remorseless blows, And fairest things before its fury quail ; 32 AN ISLAND LYRIC. It tears the petals of the wild brier rose, And rudely scatters them about the vale. Through the dim corridors of ISTeptune's caves That underlie the crags along the shore, With step unsteady go the wandering waves, And answer back to one another's roar. On yonder tree the poor affrighted bird Cowers, forgetful of his gushing song ; Such direful tumult he has never heard In any season of his whole life long. How very nice these browned and basted fish Are, with the buttered muffins and the »tea ! Ah, quiet rogues, I know you do not wish Yourselves again in that tempestuous sea !