The Fowler - A Poem from 1841

By Delta. From Blackwood for Sept.

"And in there care in heav'n and is there love

In heav'nly spirits to these creature base.

That may compassion of their evils move

There is — else much more wretched were the case

Of men than beasts. But oh! the exceeding grace

Of highest God that loves his creatures so,

And all his works with mercy doth embrace,

That blessed angels he sends to and fro.

To serve on wicked man to serve his wicked foe."

Spenser.

 

I have an old remembrance — 'tis as old

As Childhood's visions, and 'tis mingled with

Dim thoughts, and scenes grotesque, by fantasy

From out Oblivion's twilight conjured up.

Ere Truth had shorn Imagination's beams,

Or to forlorn reality tamed down

The buoyant spirit. Yes! The shapes and hues

Of winter twilight, often as the year

Revolves, and hoar-frost grimes the window-sill,

Bring back the lone waste scene that gave it birth,

And make me, for a moment, what I was

Then, on that Polar morn, a little boy,

And Earth again the realm of fairyland.

 

A Fowler was our visitant; his talk

At eve beside the flickering hearth, while howled

The outward winds, and hail-drops on the pane

Tinkled, or flown the chimney in the flame

Whizzed as they melted, was of forest and field,

Wherein lay bright wild-birds and timorous beasts

That shunned the face of man; and oh! the joy,

The passion which lit up his brow, to con

The feats of slight and cunning skill by which

Their haunts were neared, or on the heathy hills,

Or 'mid the undergrove; on snowy moor,

Or by the rushy lake — what time the dawn

Reddens the east, or from on high the moon

In the smooth waters sees her picture's orb,

The white cloud slumbering in the windless sky.

And midnight mantling all the silent hills.

 

I do remember me the very time —

Tho' thirty shadowy years have lapsed between?

'Tis graved as by the hand of yesterday,

For weeks had raved the winds; the angry seas

Howl'd to the darkness, and downfallen the snows;

The red-breast to the window came for crumbs;

Hunger had to the coleworts driven the hate;

The crow, at noontide, pecked the traveled road;

And the wood-pigeon, timorously bold,

Starved from the forest, neared the homes of man.

It was the dreariest depth of winter-tide,

And on the ocean and its isles was felt

The iron sway of the North; yes, even the fowl —

That through the polar summer months could see

A beauty in Spitzbergen's naked isles,

Or on the drifting icebergs seek a home —

Even they had fled, on southern wing, in search

Of less inclement shores.

 

Perturbed by dreams

Passed o'er the slow night-watches; many a thought

And many a hope was forward bent on morn;

But weary was the tedious chime on chime,

And hour on hour 't was dark, and still it was dark

At length we rose — for now we counted five —

And by the flickering hearth arrayed ourselves

In coats and 'kerchiefs, for the early drift

And biting season fit; the fowling-piece

Was shouldered, and the blood-stained game pouch slung

On this side, and the gleaming flask on that:

In sooth, we were a most accordant pair;

And thus accoutred, 10 the lone sea-shore

In fond and fierce precipitance we flew.

 

There was no breath abroad; each in its cave,

As if enchanted, slept the winds, and left

Earth in a voiceless trance : around the porch

All stirlessly the darksome ivy clung;

All silently the leafless trees held up

Their bare boughs to the sky; the atmosphere,

Untroubled in its cold serenity,

Wept icy dews; and now the later stars,

As by some hidden necromantic charm,

Dilate, amid the death-like calm profound,

On the white slumber-mantled earth gazed down. —

Words may not tell, how to the temperament,

And to the hue of that enchanted hour,

The spirit was subdued: a wizard scene!

In the far west, the Peatland's gloomy ridge

Belted the pale blue sky, whereon a cloud,

Fantastic, grey, and tinged with solemn light,

Lay like a dreaming monster, and the moon,

Waning, above its silvery rim upheld

Her horns — as 't were the Spectre of the Past.

Silently, silently, on we trode and trode.

As if a spell had frozen up our words :

White lay the wolds around us, ankle deep

In new-fallen snows, which champ'd beneath our tread;

And, by the marge of winding Esk, which showed

The mirrored stars upon its map of ice,

Downward in haste we journeyed to the shore

Of Ocean, whose drear, multitudinous voice

Unto the listening spirit of silence sang.

 

Oh, leaf! from out the volume of far years

Dissevered, oft, how oft have the young buds

Of Spring unfolded, have the Summer skies

In their deep blue o'ercanopied the earth,

And Autumn, in September's ripening breeze,

Rustled her harvests, since the theme was one

Present, and darkly all that Future lay,

Which now is of the perished and the past,

Since then a generation's span hath fled,

With all its varied whirls of chance and change —

With all it's casualties of birth and death;

And, looking round, sadly I feel this world

Another, though the same; — another in

The eyes that gleam, the hearts that throb, the hopes,

The fears, the friendships of the soul; the same

In outward aspect — in the hills which cleave —

As landmarks of historical renown —

With azure peaks the sky; in the green plain,

That spreads its annual wild-flowers to the sun;

And in the river, whose blue course is marked

By many a well known bend and shadowy tree : —

Yet o'er the oblivious gulf, whose mazy gloom

Ensepulchres so many things, I see

As 't were of yesterday — yet robed in tints

Which yesterday has lost, or never had —

The desolate features of that Polar morn —

Its twilight shadows, and its twinkling stars —

The snows far spreading — the expanse of sand,

Ribbed by the roaring and receded sea.

And, shedding over all a wizard light,

The waning moon above the dim-seen hills.

 

At length, upon the solitary shore

We walked of ocean, which, with sullen voice,

Hollow and never-ceasing, to the north

Sang its primeval song. A weary waste!

We passed through pools, where mussel, clam and wilk

Clove to their gravelly beds; o'er slimy rocks,

Ridgy and dark, with dank fresh fuel green,

Where the prawn wriggled, and the tiny crab

Slid sideway from our path, until we gained

The land's extremest point, a sandy jut,

Narrow, and by the weltering waves begirt

Around; and there we laid us down and watched,

While from the west the pale moon disappeared,

Pronely, the sea-fowl and the coming dawn.

 

Now Day with Darkness for the mastery strove;

The stars had waned away — all, save the last

And fairest, Lucifer, whose sliver lamp,

In solitary beauty, twinkling, shone

'Mid the far west, where, through the clouds of rack

Floating around, peeped out at intervals

A patch of sky; — straightway the reign of Night

Was finished, and, as if instinctively,

The ocean flocks, or slumbering on the wave

Or on the isles, seemed the approach of dawn

To feel; and, rising from afar, were heard

Shrill shrieks and pipings desolate — a pause

Ensued, and then the same lone sounds returned,

And suddenly the whirring rush of wings

Went circling round us o'er the level sands,

Then died away : and, as we looked aloft

Between us and the sky, we saw a speck

Of black upon the blue — some huge, wild bird,

Osprey or eagle, high amid the clouds

Sailing majestic, on its plumes to catch

The earliest crimson of the approaching day.

 

'Twere sad to tell our murderous deeds that morn,

Silent upon the chilly beach we lay

Prone, while the drifting snow-flakes o'er us fell.

Like Nature's frozen tears, for our misdeeds

Of wanton cruelty. The eider ducks,

With their wild eyes, and necks of changeful blue,

We watched, now diving down, now on the surge

Flapping their pinions, of our ambuscade

Unconscious — till a sudden death was found :

While floating o'er us, in the graceful curves

Of silent beauty down the sea-mew fell :

The gilinot upon the shell-bank lay

Bleeding, and oft, in wonderment, its mate

Flew round, with mournful cry, to bid it rise;

Then shrieking, fled afar : the sandpipers,

A tiny flock, innumerable, as round

And round they, flew, bewailed their broken ranks :

And the scared heron sought his inland marsh.

With blood-bedabbled plume around us rose

A slaughtered hecatomb; and to my heart

(My heart then open to all-sympathies)

It spoke of tyrannous cruelty — of man

The desolator; and of some far day,

When the accountable shall make account,

And but the merciful shall mercy find.

 

Soul-sickened, satiate, and dissatisfied,

An altered being, homeward, I returned,

My thoughts revolting at the thirst for blood

So brutalizing, so destructive of

The finer sensibilities, which man

In boyhood owns, and which the world destroys. —

Nature had preached a sermon to my heart :

And from that moment, on that snowy morn,

I loathed the purpose and the power to kill.

October 4, 1841. New York Tribune 1(151): 4. Based upon terminology and other linguistic clues, this prose may have been originated on the east side of the North Atlantic Ocean. There may be transcription errors due to a lack of legibility associated with the online presentation of the source document.