Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

A Representative Selection of Sonnets

from Sonnets: First Series, 1854-1860

VII

Dank fens of cedar, hemlock branches gray
With trees and trail of mosses, wringing-wet,
Beds of the black pitchpine in dead leaves set
Whose wasted red has wasted to white away,
Remnants of rain and droppings of decay,
Why hold ye so my heart, nor dimly let
Through your deep leaves the light of yesterday,
The faded glimmer of a sunshine set?
Is it that in your darkness, shut from strife,
The bread of tears becomes the bread of life?
Far from the roar of day, beneath your boughs
Fresh griefs beat tranquilly, and loves and vows
Grow green in your gray shadows, dearer far
Even than all lovely lights and roses are?

VIII

As when down some broad river dropping, we
Day after day behold the assuming shores
Sink and grow dim, as the great watercourse
Pushes his banks apart and seeks the sea:
Benches of pines, high shelf and balcony,
To flats of willow and low sycamores
Subsiding, till where'er the wave we see,
Himself is his horizon utterly.
So fades the portion of our early world,
Still on the ambit hangs the purple air;
Yet while we lean to read the secret there,
The stream that by green shoresides plashed and purled
Expands: the mountains melt to vapors rare,
And life alone circles out flat and bare.

IX

Yet wear we on, the deep light disallowed
That lit our youth; in years no longer young
We wander silently, and brood among
Dead graves, and tease the sunbreak and the cloud
For import: were it not better yet to fly,
To follow those that go before the throng,
Reasoning from stone to star, and easily
Exampling this existence? Or shall I --
Who yield slow reverence where I cannot see
And gather gleams where'er by chance or choice
My footsteps draw, though brokenly dispensed --
Come into light at last? or suddenly
Struck to the knees like Saul, one arm against
The overbearing brighness, hear a voice?

^[1]

from Sonnets: Second Series, 1854-1860

I

That boy, the farmer said, with hazel wand
Pointing him out, half by the haycock hid,
Though bare sixteen, can work at what he's bid
From sun till set, to cradle, reap, or band.
I heard the words, but scarce could understand
Whether they claimed a smile or gave me pain:
Or was it aught to me, in that green lane,
That all day yesterday, the briars amid,
He held the plough against the jarring land
Steady, or kept his place among the mowers
Whilst other fingers, sweeping for the flowers,
Brought from the forest back a crimson stain?
Was it a thorn that touched the flesh, or did
The pokeberry spit purple on my hand?

^[2]

XV

Gertrude and Gulielma, sister-twins,
Dwelt in the valley at the farmhouse old;
Nor grief had touched their locks of dark and gold
Nor dimmed the fragrant whiteness of their skins:
Both beautiful, and one in height and mould;
Yet one had loveliness which the spirit wins
To other worlds: eyes, forehead, smile and all,
More softly serious than the twilight's fall.
The other -- can I e'er forget the day
When, stealing from a laughing group away,
To muse with absent eye and motion slow,
Her beauty fell upon me like a blow? --
Gertrude! with red flowerlip, and silk black hair!
Yet Gulielma was by far more fair.

XVI

Under the mountain, as when first I knew
Its low dark roof and chimney creeper-twined,
The red house stands; and yet my footsteps find,
Vague in the walks, waste balm and feverfew.
But they are gone: no soft-eyed sisters trip
Across the porch or lintels; where, behind,
The mother sat, sat knitting with pursed lip.
The house stands vacant in its green recess,
Absent of beauty as a broken heart.
The wild rain enters, and the sunset wind
Sighs in the chambers of their loveliness
Or shakes the pane -- and in the silent noons
The glass falls from the window, part by part,
And ringeth faintly in the grassy stones.

^[3]

from Sonnets: Third Series, 1860-1872

I

Once on a day, alone but not elate,
I sat perusing a forgotten sage
And turning hopelessly a dim old page
Of history, long disused and out of date,
Reading "his Method" till I lost my own.
When suddenly there fell a gold presage
Of sunset sunshine on the letters thrown.
The day had been one cloud, but now a bird
Shot into song. I left my hermitage
With happy heart; but ere I reached the gate
The sun was gone, the bird, and bleak and drear,
All but an icy breath the balsams stirred:
I turned again and, entering with a groan,
Sat darkly down to Dagoraus Whear.

^[4]

Notes

1. Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard; ed. by N. Scott Momaday (1965). The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 6-7. 
2. Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard; ed. by N. Scott Momaday (1965). The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 19. 
3. Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard; ed. by N. Scott Momaday (1965). The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 26. 
4. Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard; ed. by N. Scott Momaday (1965). The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 41.