Selected Poems of Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Collected and annotated in 1995 by Dave Gross

This collection is certainly incomplete -- many of Ludlow's poems are not included -- and imperfect, as my resources, my patience, and my ability to read nineteenth century handwriting are all wanting. Furthermore, to paraphrase Star Trek, "I'm a computer scientist, Jim, not a poet" so some of the subtleties of poetic form and some of the literary references may have left me clueless. Letters, words & phrases in [brackets] are guesses prompted by indecipherable photocopies and bad handwriting, sometimes based on what the word looks like, or on what word might logically (due to rhyme structure or appearance elsewhere in the poem) appear; other times just a mish-mash of letters that resembled those in the original. I encourage others with better talents to take up where I left off and decipher the scribbling.
-- Dave Gross

Contents:

Song to Old Union
The Best School for Everybody
The Hymn of the Soul of Man
"Over his head the daisies swim..."
I Did Not Ask That I Might Have a Name
Too Late
Socrates Snooks
Truth on His Travels
Hymn of Forbearance
The First Death
The Voices of a Man's Soul
Battle Song to the Soldier of Life
The Jolly Fellow
A la dame à voile noire
Ode to Night
Glory and Fame
Lord Levynn's Love
"I will not wish thy life a tinted bubble..."
A Twilight-Dream
Serve God with the Best
A Fragment
To the Profile Rock at Niagara
Hymn to our Intercessor
FOOTNOTES

Song to Old Union [1]

{ source: Union College commencement pamphlet, 23 July 1856 }

AIR -- "Sparkling and Bright."

Let the Grecian dream of his sacred stream,
   And sing of the brave adorning,
That Phoebus weaves from his laurel leaves
   At the golden gates of Morning[2];
But the brook that bounds through Union's grounds
   Gleams bright as the Delphic water,
And a prize as fair as a god may wear,
   Is a dip[3] from our Alma Mater!

CHORUS
Then here's to thee, the[4] brave and free,
   Old Union smiling o'er us;
And for many a day, as thy walls grow gray,[5]
   May they ring with thy children's chorus.[6]

Could our praises throng on the waves of song,
   Like an Orient fleet gem-bringing,[7]
We would bear to thee the argosy,
   And crown thee with pearls of singing;
But thy smile beams down beneath a crown
   Whose glory asks no other;
We gather it not from the green sea-grot --
   'Tis the love we bear our mother!

		CHORUS

Let the joy that falls from thy dear old walls,
   Unchanged, brave Time's[8] on-darting,
And our only tear falls[9] once a year
   On hands that clasp ere parting;
And when other throngs shall sing thy[10] songs,
   And their spell once hath bound us,[11]
Our faded hours shall revive their flowers,[12]
   And the Past[13] shall live around us.

		CHORUS

The Best School for Everybody [14]

{ source: mss. in Union College Schaffer Library of poem as copied from the notebook in 1915 by Helen Ludlow and sent to Alice Crosby, for whom the poem was originally written "probably in 1855" }

Little girl, where[15] do you go to school,
   And when do you go, little girl?
Over the grass from morn till night[16]
   Your feet are in a whirl;
You and the cat jump here and there,
   You and the robins sing,
But what do you know in the spelling-book,
   Have you ever learned anything?

Thus the little girl answered
   With a voice like a leaping spring,[17]

When morning's eyes are rosy
   With weeping tears of dew,[18]
The[19] swallows waken in the eaves,
   And the lamb bleats to the ewe;
When the lawns are golden-barred
   And the early wind is cool,[20]
And[21] morning's breath blows out the stars
   Then do I go to school.

My school-roof is the dimpled[22] sky,
   And the bells that call[23] me there
Are all the voices of morning
   In the dew-besprinkled air;[24]
Old Nature is the madam[25]
   And the book whereout I spell
Is dog's eared[26] at the woods and streams[27]
   Where I know the lesson well.

Thus the little girl answered
   In her musical out-door tone,[28]
And[29] the next time that she goes to school
   She will not be alone.

The Hymn of the Soul of Man

{ source: Wilkie, Franc Bangs Personal Reminiscences of Thirty-Five Years of Journalism Ch. IV, also: the Union Alumni Monthly Nov. 1937. But first published in the Union College "New Era" }

We are not things of yesterday;
   Our souls' ancestral rivers run
From fountains of antiquity[30]
   That gushed ere God lit up the sun.
Across the solitudes of Time,
   No more by mortal footsteps trod,
Where the dead nations sleep sublime,
   Come whispers of our source in God.

The slumber of Humanity
   Is ever vexed by mighty dreams:
She smiles or shudders ceasely,[31]
   According as the vision seems;
For, ever[32] mingling in her sleep,
   Are glorious temples broken down,
And gulfs, across whose awful deep
   She grasps at a primeval crown.

And here and there among the years
   Some giant prophet lifts his hands,
And pours his burden[33] in her ears,
   As Furus sweeps the ocean sands.
Such was the voice that shook the world
   From out Academia's trees,
And such the lightning that was hurled
   From thy blind eyes, Maconides!

Unconscious prophets though they be,
   Seers meaning more than they have known,
And dreaming not that Deity
   Was speaking though them from His throne,
Their word[34] shall like the sea-waves roll,
   Their burning thoughts shall never die,
Till man awakes his sleeping soul
   To know its immortality.

Arise to deeds of great intent,
   O man! and[35] with thy valiant hands
Rear heaven-high[36] a monument
   Whose shadows[37] shall reach other lands.
The glories of a noble strife
   Survive the pulses of endeavor,
The echoes of a mighty life
   Ring through Time's corridors forever.[38]

"Over his head the daisies swim..."

{ source: Helen Ludlow's notebook }

Over his head the daisies swim
   In wind-swept eddies of sea-green grass
He hath rest in every limb,
   Nothing more can come to pass
      Which hath aught in it for him
         To weary or harrass.

He was not a saint on earth
   Nor wished he in heaven a saint to be
[If?] a single Chair at the father's hearth
   Must go empty for all eternity
"I have been a friend to want and dearth
   Without them I will not be saved!" said he.

He had lived & loved & lost, that's all --
   And the joy which [missed?] him seemed so dear
That he could not believe it was [under?] the call
   And the angels say "He hath found it here."
In the depths of the night he heard them call
   His soul to its Golden Year.

"I Did Not Ask That I Might Have a Name"

{ source: Helen Ludlow's notebook }

I did not ask that I might have a name
   To sound forever like a wind-lashed sea,
I sought no glory bursting like a flame
   Upon humanity

In days gone by the shadow of a crown
   Hung over me & wooed me to be great --
I sought the sunshine that I might lay down
   Its visionary weight

I bent my forehead coldly from the kiss
   Of fair cajoling Fortune, braving out
Her threat of stranded destiny & bliss
   Wrecked if she turned about

My God, Thou knowest it was not with these
   I spent my labor or laid up my trust
Nor ever stretched my eager hand to seize
   Their heaps of withered dust!

No! all I asked was somewhere in the world
   To love & be repaid with love: as deep
Ere out of Life's small day light I was hurled
   Into forgotten sleep

Ah, few men with a burden like my own
   Have ever vexed their prayers through nights untold
Deeming it little to be loved alone
   While Life hath pomp & gold!

Was it that I implored so small a boon
   That my prayer floated back as clouds of even
Drift from the icy barriers of the moon
   Too light to enter Heaven?

Or did I in my daring ask a thing
   So mighty that it challenged God to mark
Me as one thenceforth doomed to wandering
   Forever in the dark?

I am not answered.  It were better so;
   He who without a lamp sits through the night
Seeth no better that his soul doth know
   Wherefore he hath no light.

Oh how in yearning have I[39] spent my time,
   Wasting unto the socket heart & strength
While the years rounded like a shallow rhyme
   Their slow unfruitful length.

I stand as one who from a dungeon dream
   Of open air and the free arch of stars
Waking to things that be from things that seem
   Beats madly on the bars.

I am not yet quite used to be aware
   That all my labor & my hope had birth
Only to freeze me with the coffined share[40]
   Of void & soulless earth.

Yet soon I shall be vexed with no more thought,
   If all of good for which I wished can burst
Like a chilled bubble, I too may be nought
   And I have known the worst.

Too Late

{source: Harper's New Monthly Magazine June 1869}

"Ah! si la jeunesse savait -- si la vieillesse pouvait!"

There sat an old man on a rock,
    And unceasing bewailed him of Fate --
That concern where we all must take stock,
   Though our vote has no bearing nor weight;
       And the old man sang him an old, old song --
       Never sang voice so clear and strong
       That it could drown the old man's[41] long,
          For he sang the song "Too late! Too late!"

"When we want, we have for our pains
     The promise that if we but wait
Till the want has burned out of our brains
    Every means shall be present to sate[42];
       While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
       While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
       When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
          And every thing[43] comes too late -- too late!

"When strawberries seemed like red heavens --
    Terrapin stew a wild dream --
When my brain was at sixes and sevens
    If my mother had `folks' and ice-cream,
       Then I gazed with a lickerish hunger
       At the restaurant man and fruit-monger --
       But oh! how I wished I were younger
          When the goodies all came in a stream -- in a stream!

"I've a splendid blood horse, and a liver
    That it jars into torture to trot;
My row-boat's the gem of the river --
    Gout makes every knuckle a knot!
       I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome,
       But no palate for ménus -- no eyes for a dome --
       Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home
          When no home but an attic he'd got -- he'd got.

"How I longed in that lonest of garrets,
    Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
    Two pigs of my own in a sty,
       A rose-bush -- a little thatched cottage --
       Two spoons -- love -- a basin of pottage:
       Now in freestone I sit -- and my dotage --
          With a woman's chair empty close by -- close by!

"Ah! now, though I sit on a rock,
    I have shared one seat with the Great[44];
I have sat, knowing naught of the clock,
    On Love's[45] high throne of state;
       But the lips that kissed and the arms that caressed
       To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed,
       And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed
          Had they only not come too late! too late!"

Socrates Snooks

{ source: The Best Loved Poems of the American People, selected by Hazel Felleman }

Mister Socrates Snooks, a lord of creation,
The second time entered the married relation:
Xantippe Caloric accepted his hand,
And they thought him the happiest man in the land.
But scarce had the honeymoon passed o'er his head,
When one morning to Xantippe Socrates said:
"I think, for a man of my standing in life,
This house is too small, as I now have a wife;
So, as early as possible, carpenter Carey
Shall be sent for to widen my house and my dairy."

"Now, Socrates, dearest," Xantippe replied,
"I hate to hear everything vulgarly my'd;
Now, whenever you speak of your chattels again,
Say, our cowhouse, our barnyard, our pigpen."
"By your leave, Mrs. Snooks, I will say what I please
Of my houses, my lands, my gardens, my trees."
"Say our," Xantippe exclaimed in a rage.
"I won't, Mrs. Snooks, though you ask it an age!"

Oh, woman! though only a part of man's rib,
If the story in Genesis don't tell a fib,
Should your naughty companion e'er quarrel with you,
You are certain to prove the best man of the two.
In the following case this was certainly true;
For the lovely Xantippe just pulled off her shoe,
And laying about her, all sides at random,
The adage was verified -- "Nil desperandum."

Mister Socrates Snooks, after trying in vain,
To ward off the blows which descended like rain --
Concluding that valor's best part was discretion --
Crept under the bed like a terrified Hessian;
But the dauntless Xantippe, not one whit afraid,
Converted the siege into a blockade.

At last, after reasoning the thing in his pate,
He concluded `twas useless to strive against fate:
And, so, like a tortoise protruding his head,
Said, "My dear, may we come out from under our bed?"
"Ha! ha!" she exclaimed, "Mr. Socrates Snooks,
I perceive you agree to my terms by your looks;
Now, Socrates -- hear me -- from this happy hour,
If you'll only obey me, I'll never look sour."

`Tis said the next Sabbeth, ere going to church,
He chanced for a clean pair of trousers to search;
Having found them, he asked, with a few nervous twitches,
"My dear, may we put on our new Sunday breeches?"

Truth on His Travels

{source: the College Hill Mercury 30 Dec. 1850, pp. 90-91 }

Truth, tired of lying hidden, In volumes old and musty, To rise from the dust forbidden, In the brain of Doctor Rusty; Determined no longer to lie in check, Chained down by an old opinion, Which for numberless years had galled his neck, And made him the sage's minion -- With one strong effort his fetters he broke, Determining to rebel; And with one more vigorous masterly stroke, He burst from his dingy cell. Crying out in exultation -- "With healing in my wings, I will visit every nation -- I'll reveal myself to Kings. Each mighty potentate on earth, Shall feel my power to bless, And I will hail the heaven-sprung birth Of the rule of righteousness." Thus speaking he wended his airy way, To the seven-hilled city of Rome; For there he heard Dr. Rusty say Was the arts' and sciences' home. So darting down swift as the glance of an axe, It chanced that "Willy Nilly" -- He lit in a pack of Italian tracts Belonging to Dr. Achilli, Which were slowly and quietly going along On the back of a Roman mule, To the cadence low of the driver's song, Which he hummed in the evening cool. "Aha," cried Truth, and he gaily laughed As he curled himself snugly in, "I am now in my element, fore and aft, In truthfulness up to the chin. I shall teach to admiring thousands These themes that these volumns discuss -- The doctrines of Wickliffe and Luther, Of Cramer, Melanchton and Huss." But without his host did he reckon, For the Gen d' Armes shook every fibre -- They threw Doctor Achille in prison, And Truth and his tracts in the Tiber. But he scrabbled ashore as well as he could, With his wings all draggled and dripping, And sat sorrowfully down on an old log of wood, Like a boy that had got a whipping. But shaking at length like a Newfoundland dog -- He managed his pinions to dry, And taking a leap from the side of the log, Soared upward -- was lost in the sky. He went to old England, and called for repeal Of the taxes -- those terrible bores Which force men to pay for each pleasure they feel, For their sorrows, and sicknesses, and sores; For their windows, and doors, and each cutlet of veal Which take from the widow her last pint of meal; But John Bull liked his conscience to rest in repose So he lifted his toes, (The ones afflicted by gout, we suppose,) And gently kicked Truth out of doors. Then he crossed the straits of Dover To visit sunny France, And there Right Reason was all over The colleague God of Chance; And he tried to teach the Sans-Culottes To serve the King of Kings, But they stared as if they had been shot, At such monarchic things; And Monsieur Tonson shook his head With look of dreadful meaning, And hinted of the dreamless bed That followed Guillotining. Then Truth exclaimed, "There's no place here Where the sole of my foot may rest, I'll take my flight for the hemisphere That lieth away in the west, Where the setting sun mirrors his blazing front On a people true and brave, As the courser's foot in the forest hunt, On Oceans' restless wave, When he throweth the glare of his burn-eye On a nation bold and free, And looketh down from his home in the skies, On a land of liberty. So with all these magnificent thoughts in his head, He landed at half-past nine In a city not a thousand miles From "Mason & Dixon's line." But the passing throng in the busy street Gave no heed to the stranger Truth, Save some whiskered dandies he chanced to meet, Who said it was a pity forsooth, That a vagrant like him should be strolling about Without the policeman's detection, And declared in full terms that they thought that the lout Should be sent to the house of correction.

* * * * * * *

Cetera desint.

Hymn of Forbearance [46]

{ source: Carpenter, Frank B. "In Memoriam: Fitz Hugh Ludlow, as He Was Known by a Friend." The Evening Mail Dec ? 1870 }

O living were a bitter thing,
   A riddle without reasons,
If each sat lonely, gathering
Within his[47] own heart's narrow ring
The hopes and fears encumbering
   The flight of earthly seasons.

Thank God that in Life's little day,
   Between our dawn and setting,
We have kind deeds to give away,
Sad hearts for which our own may pray
And strength when we are wronged to stay,
   Forgiving and forgetting.

Thank God for other feet that be
   By ours in Life's wayfaring --
For blessed Christian charity,
   Believing good she cannot see,
Suffering[48] her friends' infirmity,
   Enduring and forbearing.

We all are travellers, who throng
   A thorny road together,
And if some pilgrim not so strong
As I, but foot-sore[49], does me wrong,
I'll[50] make excuse, the road is long,
   And stormy is the weather.

What comfort will it yield the day
   Whose light shall find us dying,
To know that once we had our way
Against a child of weaker clay,
And bought our triumph in the fray,
   With purchase of his sighing?

{ Oh, who, when Life to many souls
   So little hath to cheer it,
Will cover up his kindly coals
In ashes, hoard the slender doles
Which to the shipwrecked on Earth's shoals
   Might still so much endear it? }[51]

Most like our Lord are they who bear,
   Like him, long with the sinning;
The music of long suffering prayer
Brings angels down God's golden stair,
Like those through Olivet's darkened air,
   Who saw our life beginning.[52]