Apathy and Enthusiasm

                 (1860–1.)

                        I.


O the clammy cold November,

    And the winter white and dead,

And the terror dumb with stupor,

    And the sky a sheet of lead;

And events that came resounding

    With the cry that All was lost,

Like the thunder-cracks of massy ice

    In intensity of frost—

Bursting one upon another

    Through the horror of the calm.

    The paralysis of arm

In the anguish of the heart;

And the hollowness and dearth.

    The appealings of the mother

    To brother and to brother

Not in hatred so to part—

And the fissure in the hearth

    Growing momently more wide.

Then the glances 'tween the Fates,

    And the doubt on every side,

And the patience under gloom

In the stoniness that waits

The finality of doom.


                        
II.


So the winter died despairing,

    And the weary weeks of Lent;

And the ice-bound rivers melted,

    And the tomb of Faith was rent.

O, the rising of the People

    Came with springing of the grass,

They rebounded from dejection

    And Easter came to pass.

And the young were all elation

    Hearing Sumter's cannon roar,

And they thought how tame the Nation

    In the age that went before.

And Michael seemed gigantical,

    The Arch-fiend but a dwarf;

And at the towers of Erebus

    Our striplings flung the scoff.

But the elders with foreboding

    Mourned the days forever o'er,

And re called the forest proverb,

    The Iroquois' old saw:

Grief to every graybeard

    When young Indians lead the war.