THE

MAN OF UZ,

AND

OTHER POEMS.

BY

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

HARTFORD
WILLIAMS, WILEY & WATERMAN.

1862.

Entered according to Act or Congress, in the Year 1862, by

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut.

[ PREFACE. ]

The arrogance of attempting a parody on the most ancient and sublime poem in the Inspired Volume, is not mine. The great pleasure enjoyed in its perusal from early years, had occasionally prompted metrical imitations of isolated passages. These fragmentary effusions, recently woven together, are here presented, with the hope that as wandering streams are traced to their original fountain, some heart may thus be led to the history of the stricken and sustained Patriarch, with more studious research, purer delight, or a deeper spirit of devotion.

L. H. S.

Hartford, Conn., November 5th, 1862.

CONTENTS.

THE RURAL LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND,

IN MEMORIAM.

1859.

1860.

1861.

1862.

[ THE MAN OF UZ. ]

A joyous festival.—

The gathering back

Of scattered flowrets to the household wreath.

Brothers and sisters from their sever'd homes

Meeting with ardent smile, to renovate

The love that sprang from cradle memories

And childhood's sports, and whose perennial stream

Still threw fresh crystals o'er the sands of life.

—Each bore some treasured picture of the past,

Some graphic incident, by mellowing time

Made beautiful, while ever and anon,

Timbrel and harp broke forth, each pause between.

Banquet and wine-cup, and the dance, gave speed

To youthful spirits, and prolong'd the joy.

The patriarch father, with a chasten'd heart

Partook his children's mirth, having God's fear

Ever before him. Earnestly he brought

His offerings and his prayers for every one

Of that beloved group, lest in the swell

And surging superflux of happiness

They might forget the Hand from whence it came,

Perchance, displease the Almighty.

Many a care

Had he that wealth creates. Not such as lurks

In heaps metallic, which the rust corrodes,

But wealth that fructifies within the earth

Whence cometh bread, or o'er its surface roves

In peaceful forms of quadrupedal life

That thronging round the world's first father came

To take their names, 'mid Eden's tranquil shades,

Ere sin was born.

Obedient to the yoke,

Five hundred oxen turn'd the furrow'd glebe

Where agriculture hides his buried seed

Waiting the harvest hope, while patient wrought

An equal number of that race who share

The labor of the steed, without his praise.

—Three thousand camels, with their arching necks,

Ships of the desert, knelt to do his will,

And bear his surplus wealth to distant climes,

While more than twice three thousand snowy sheep

Whitened the hills. Troops of retainers fed

These flocks and herds, and their subsistence drew

From the same lord,—so that this man of Uz

Greater than all the magnates of the east,

Dwelt in old time before us.

True he gave,

And faithfully, the hireling his reward,

Counting such justice 'mid the happier forms

Of Charity, which with a liberal hand

He to the sad and suffering poor dispensed.

Eyes was he to the blind, and to the lame

Feet, while the stranger and the traveller found

Beneath, the welcome shelter of his roof

The blessed boon of hospitality.

To him the fatherless and widow sought

For aid and counsel. Fearlessly he rose

For those who had no helper. His just mind

Brought stifled truth to light, disarm'd the wiles

Of power, and gave deliverance to the weak.

He pluck'd the victim from the oppressor's grasp,

And made the tyrant tremble.

To his words

Men listened, as to lore oracular,

And when beside the gate he took his seat

The young kept silence, and the old rose up

To do him honor. After his decree

None spake again, for as a prince he dwelt

Wearing the diadem of righteousness,

And robed in that respect which greatness wins

When leagued with goodness, and by wisdom crown'd.

The grateful prayers and blessings of the souls

Ready to perish, silently distill'd

Upon him, as he slept.

So as a tree

Whose root is by the river's brink, he grew

And flourish'd, while the dews like balm-drops hung

All night upon his branches.

Yet let none

Of woman born, presume to build his hopes

On the worn cliff of brief prosperity,

Or from the present promise, predicate

The future joy. The exulting bird that sings

Mid the green curtains of its leafy nest

His tuneful trust untroubled there to live,

And there to die, may meet the archer's shaft

When next it spreads the wing.

The tempest folds

O'er the smooth forehead of the summer noon

Its undiscover'd purpose, to emerge

Resistless from its armory, and whelm

In floods of ruin, ere the day decline.

Lightning and sword!

Swift messengers, and sharp,

Reapers that leave no gleanings. In their path

Silence and desolation fiercely stalk.

—O'er trampled hills, and on the blood-stain'd plains

There is no low of kine, or bleat of flocks,

The fields are rifled, and the shepherds slain.

The Man of Uz, who stood but yestermorn

Above all compeers,—clothed with wealth and power,

To day is poorer than his humblest hind.

A whirlwind from the desert!

All unwarn'd

Its fury came. Earth like a vassal shook.

Majestic trees flew hurtling through the air

Like rootless reeds.

There was no time for flight.

Buried in household wrecks, all helpless lay

Masses of quivering life.

Job's eldest son

That day held banquet for their numerous line

At his own house. With revelry and song,

One moment in the glow of kindred hearts

The lordly mansion rang, the next they lay

Crush'd neath its ruins.

He,—the childless sire,

Last of his race, and lonely as the pine

That crisps and blackens 'neath the lightning shaft

Upon the cliff, with such a rushing tide

The mountain billows of his misery came,

Drove they not Reason from her beacon-hold?

Swept they not his strong trust in Heaven away?

List,—list,—the sufferer speaks.

"The Lord who gave

Hath taken away,—and blessed be His name."

Oh Patriarch!—teach us, mid this changeful life

Not to mistake the ownership of joys

Entrusted to us for a little while,

But when the Great Dispenser shall reclaim

His loans, to render them with praises back,

As best befits the indebted.

Should a tear

Moisten the offering, He who knows our frame

And well remembereth that we are but dust,

Is full of pity.

It was said of old

Time conquer'd Grief. But unto me it seems

That Grief overmastereth Time. It shows how wide

The chasm between us, and our smitten joys

And saps the strength wherewith at first we went

Into life's battle. We perchance, have dream'd

That the sweet smile the sunbeam of our home

The prattle of the babe the Spoiler seiz'd,

Had but gone from us for a little while,—

And listen'd in our fallacy of hope

At hush of eve for the returning step

That wake the inmost pulses of the heart

To extasy,—till iron-handed Grief

Press'd down the nevermore into our soul,

Deadening us with its weight.

The man of Uz

As the slow lapse of days and nights reveal'd

The desolation of his poverty

Felt every nerve that at the first great shock

Was paralyzed, grow sensitive and shrink

As from a fresh-cut wound. There was no son

To come in beauty of his manly prime

With words of counsel and with vigorous hand

To aid him in his need, no daughter's arm

To twine around him in his weariness,

Nor kiss of grandchild at the even-tide

Going to rest, with prayer upon its lips.

Still a new trial waits.

The blessed health

Heaven's boon, thro' which with unbow'd form we bear

Burdens and ills, forsook him. Maladies

Of fierce and festering virulence attack'd

His swollen limbs. Incessant, grinding pains

Laid his strength prostrate, till he counted life

A loathed thing. Dire visions frighted sleep

That sweet restorer of the wasted frame,

And mid his tossings to and fro, he moan'd

Oh, when shall I arise, and Night be gone!

Despondence seized him. To the lowliest place

Alone he stole, and sadly took his seat

In dust and ashes.

She, his bosom friend

The sharer of his lot for many years,

Sought out his dark retreat. Shuddering she saw

His kingly form like living sepulchre,

And in the maddening haste of sorrow said

God hath forgotten.

She with him had borne

Unuttered woe o'er the untimely graves

Of all whom she had nourished,—shared with him

The silence of a home that hath no child,

The plunge from wealth to want, the base contempt

Of menial and of ingrate;—but to see

The dearest object of adoring love

Her next to God, a prey to vile disease

Hideous and loathsome, all the beauty marred

That she had worshipped from her ardent youth

Deeming it half divine, she could not bear,

Her woman's strength gave way, and impious words

In her despair she uttered.

But her lord

To deeper anguish stung by her defect

And rash advice, reprovingly replied

Pointing to Him who meeteth out below

Both good and evil in mysterious love,

And she was silenced.

What a sacred power

Hath hallow'd Friendship o'er the nameless ills

That throng our pilgrimage. Its sympathy,

Doth undergird the drooping, and uphold

The foot that falters in its miry path.

It grows more precious, as the hair grows grey.

Time's alchymy that rendereth so much dross

Back for our gay entrustments, shows more pure

The perfect essence of its sanctity,

Gold unalloyed.

How doth the cordial grasp,

Of hands that twined with ours in school days, now

Delight us as our sunbeam nears the west,

Soothing, perchance our self-esteem with proofs

That 'mid all faults the good have loved us still,

And quickening with redoubled energy

To do or suffer.

The three friends of Job

Who in the different regions where they dwelt

Teman, and Naamah and the Shuhite land,

Heard tidings of his dire calamity,

Moved by one impulse, journey'd to impart

Their sorrowing sympathy.

Yet when they saw

Him fallen so low, so chang'd that scarce a trace

Remained to herald his identity

Down by his side upon the earth, they sate

Uttering no language save the gushing tear,—

Spontaneous homage to a grief so great.

Oh Silence, born of Wisdom! we have felt

Thy fitness, when beside the smitten friend

We took our place. The voiceless sympathy

The tear, the tender pressure of the hand

Interpreted more perfectly than words

The purpose of our soul.

We speak to err,

Waking to agony some broken chord

Or bleeding nerve that slumbered. Words are weak,

When God's strong discipline doth try the soul;

And that deep silence was more eloquent

Than all the pomp of speech.

Yet the long pause

Of days and nights, gave scope for troubled thought

And their bewildered minds unskillfully

Launching all helmless on a sea of doubt

Explored the cause for which such woes were sent,

Forgetful that this mystery of life

Yields not to man's solution. Passing on

From natural pity to philosophy

That deems Heaven's judgments penal, they inferr'd

Some secret sin unshrived by penitence,

That drew such awful visitations down.

While studying thus the wherefore, with vain toil

Of painful cogitation, lo! a voice

Hollow and hoarse, as from the mouldering tomb,

"Perish the day in which I saw the light!

The day when first my mother's nursing care

Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come

Into the number of the joyful months,

Let blackness stain it and the shades of death

Forever terrify it.

For it cut

Not off as an untimely birth my span,