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.