In a rude country some four thousand miles
From Charles’ and Alfred’s birthplace you were born,
In the same year. But Charles and you were born
On the same day, and Alfred six months later.
Thus start you in a sense the race together....
Charles goes to Edinburgh, afterwards
His father picks him for the ministry,
And sends him off to Cambridge where he spends
His time on beetles and geology,
Neglects theology. Alfred is here
Fondling a Virgil and a Horace.
But you—these years you give to reading Æsop,
The Bible, lives of Washington and Franklin,
And Kirkham’s grammar.

In 1830 Alfred prints a book
Containing “Mariana,” certain other
Delicate, wind-blown bells of airy music.
And in this year you move from Indiana
And settle near Decatur, Illinois,
Hard by the river Sangamon where fever
And ague burned and shook the poor
Swamp saffron creatures of that desolate land.
While Alfred walks the flowering lanes of England,
And reads Theocritus to the song of larks
You clear the forests, plow the stumpy land,
Fight off the torments of mosquitoes, flies
And study Kirkham’s grammar.

In 1831 Charles takes a trip
Around the world, sees South America,
And studies living things in Galapagos,
Tahiti, Keeling Island and Tasmania.
In 1831 you take a trip
Upon a flat-boat down to New Orleans
Through hardships scarcely less than Joliet
And Marquette knew in 1673,
Return on foot to Orfutt’s store at Salem.

By this time Jacques Rousseau was canonized;
Jefferson dead but seven years or so;
Brook Farm was budding, Garrison had started
His Liberator, Fourier still alive;
And Emerson was preening his slim wings
For flights into broad spaces—there was stir
Enough to sweep the Shelleyan heads,—in truth
Shelley was scarcely passed a decade then.
Old Godwin still was writing, wars for freedom
Swept through the Grecian Isles, America
Had “isms” in abundance, but not one
Took hold of you.

In 1832 Alfred has drawn
Out of old Mallory and Grecian myths
The “Lady of Shalott” and fair “Œnone,”
And put them into verse.
This is the year you fight the Black Hawk war,
And issue an address to Sangamon’s people.
You are but twenty-three, yet this address
Would not shame Charles or Alfred; it’s restrained,
And sanely balanced, without extra words,
Or youth’s conceits, or imitative figures, dreams
Or “isms” of the day. No, here you hope
That enterprise, morality, sobriety
May be more general, and speak a word
For popular education, so that all
May have a “moderate education” as you say.
You make a plea for railroads and canals,
And ask the suffrages of the people, saying
You have known disappointment far too much
To be chagrined at failure, if you lose.
They take you at your word and send another
To represent them in the Legislature.
Then you decide to learn the blacksmith’s trade.
But Fate comes by and plucks you by the sleeve,
And changes history, doubtless.

By ’36 when Charles returns to England
You have become a legislator; yes
You tried again and won. You have become
A lawyer too, by working through the levels
Of laborer, store-keeper and surveyor,
Wrapped up in problems of geometry,
And Kirkham’s grammar and Sir William Blackstone,
And Coke on Littleton, and Joseph Chitty.
Brook Farm will soon bloom forth, Francois Fourier
Is still on earth, and Garrison is shaking
Terrible lightning at Slavocracy.
And certain libertarians, videlicet
John Greenleaf Whittier and others, sing
The trampling out of grapes of wrath; in truth
The Hebrews taught the idealist how to sing
Destruction in the name of God and curse
Where strength was lacking for the sword—but you
Are not a Robert Emmet, or a Shelley,
Have no false dreams of dying to bring in
The day of Liberty. At twenty-three
You’re measuring the world and waiting for
Dawn’s mists to clear that you may measure it,
And know the field’s dimensions ere you put
Your handle to the plow.

In 1833 a man named Hallam,
A friend of Alfred’s, died at twenty-two.
Thereafter Alfred worked his hopes and fears
Upon the dark impasto of this loss
In delicate colors. And in 1850
When you were sunk in melancholia,
As one of no use in the world, adjudged
To be of no use by your time and place,
Alfred brought forth his Dante dream of life,
Received the laureate wreath and settled down
With a fair wife amid entrancing richness
Of sunny seas and silken sails and dreams
Of Araby,
And ivied halls, and meadows where the breeze
Of temperate England blows the hurrying cloud.
There, seated like an Oriental king
In silk and linen clothed took the acclaim
Of England and the world!...
This is the year
You sit in a little office there in Springfield,
Feet on the desk and brood. What are you thinking?
You’re forty-one; around you spears are whacking
The wind-mills of the day, you watch and weigh.
The sun-light of your mind quivers about
The darkness every thinking soul

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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