Listen to the land; A New England notebook

Listen to the land the profile of a nation in terms of its living language. This week a New England notebook. Men are free said D.H. Lawrence. When they're in a living homeland a living organic believing community. Active in fulfilling some unfulfilled perhaps unrealized purpose. This was the case with the authors of New England leading up to the Civil War. And this week we had to listen to the land in the words of some of those authors whose. Listened to the land is produced and recorded by station w h y y Philadelphia under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. Now here is your host and writer Richard S. Burdick. Why 1850 New England was more alive than ever in the towns in the manufacturing

centers but farming life had begun to decline. The old farmers were dying out or so it seemed to those who love the country. The man who was hoeing was a sleight of hand who made their own ox yokes in ox Hills chop their three cords of wood a day newer bring the dozen or herb that grew in field or stream and know how to select a piece of timber just under oak grove walnut that measured a given amount. Cut it a scar it and load it. These tumors of the wilderness were vanishing from the land they were hewing their way to the west along the Great Lakes while the young men were returning to the cities learning to pronounce the word ban as been sometimes even been rising with the factories and the railroads. As well the advanced in the towns increased the region grew more soul contemplative novelists were appearing here and there picturing local miners with an interest in social relations that was aroused by the spread of urban standards. One had to tolerate human nature

first thing that Calvinism had scarcely encouraged. It was before one could find it amusing. Nuns wrote Van Wyck Brooks in his Pulitzer Prize winning volume the flowering of New England published by E.B. Dutton Company Incorporated a panoramic account of what has been termed the Golden Age of American literature the mid century cultural blossoming in Boston Salem and Concord which is referred to as the New England run of signs one has only to scan a list of the writers of the period names such as Longfellow Whittier Holmes Hawthorne Thoreau Emerson Poe Emily Dickinson Whitman Melville and so on to realize the significance to our native literature their contributions. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the son of a minister who himself chose the ministry as his profession. But he first took this calling for that of a life of contemplation and writing. Most notably that which was done in his dwelling by Walden Pond where among the piping frogs the rustling leaves in the

solitude the sage of Concord addressed himself to the young people of his time and words that fell upon their ears like trumpet notes. Emerson's style was lean and spare It was traded in this brief poem entitled fable which surely you once learned as a homework assignment. The Mountain and the squirrel had a quarrel and the former called The latter little prig bun replied You are doubtless very big but all sorts of weather must be taken in together to make up a year in the sphere. And I think it's no disgrace to occupy my place if I'm not so large as you. You are not so small as I am not half so spry. I'll not deny you make a very pretty squirrel dreich talents differ. All is well and wisely put. If I cannot carry forests on my back neither can you crack a knot. Not through choice but because of the next or both time we move on. So this

knowing the notebook to a contemporary of Emerson's and Ray Wadsworth Longfellow. A humble romanticist of Cambridge with a deceptively ingenuous style actually Longfellow was an innovator in meters and rhymes and introduced new modes of feeling imbued with an ineffable personal magic. Here is my last few. Often I think of the beautiful town that is seated by the sea. Often in thought go up and down the pleasant streets of that dear old town and my youth comes back to me and a verse of a Lapland song is haunting my memory still a boy as will as the winds will and the thoughts of you are long long thoughts. I can see the shadowy lines of its trees and catch in sudden gleams the sheen of the far surrounding seas an island that with it has parodies of all my boyish dreams and the burden of that old song that murmurs and whispers still a boy's

will is the winds will and the thoughts of you are long long thoughts. Remember the black wharves in the slips and the sea tides tossing free and the Spanish sailors with bearded lips in the beauty and mystery of the ships and the magic of the sea. The voice of that wayward song is singing and saying still boys will is the winds will and the thoughts of you are long long thoughts. I remember the bulwarks by the shore in the fort upon the hill the sunrise gun with its hollow roar the drum beat repeated or on or on the bugle wild and shrill and the music of that old song throbs in my memory still a boy's will is the winds will and the thoughts of youth a long long thoughts. I remember the sea fight far away our funder or the tide and the Dead Sea captains as they lay in their graves all looking the tranquil Bay where they and battle died

and the sound of that mournful song goes through me with a thrill always when is the winds when the thoughts of you are long on thoughts. I can see the breezy dome of Groves the shadows of Deering's woods and the friendships all of the early lovers come back with a Sabbath sound as of doves and quiet neighborhoods. The voice of that sweet old song and flutters and murmurs still boys will is the winds will and the thoughts of you. I long long thought I remember the gleams and bloom of the dart across the schoolboys brain the song of the silence in the heart but in Parker prophecies and in part our longings wild in vain and the voice of that full song sings on and is never still boys will is the winds will

and the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts. 12 years younger than Longfellow was James Russell Lowell one of the most adroit and accomplished younger writers of the New England run of science. Lowell had command of all poetic forms owed song epigrams sonnet narrative poem the Elegy the idol. Despite this versatility and the gusto with which he wrote Lowell's poems were not memorable. They were easy to forget. Yet in a moment of experience they were perceptive fluently beautiful as in this famous passage. It's a passage to summer which occurs at the beginning of Lowell's well-known narrative poem deriving from Mallory's legends of the Holy Grail. The vision of sirloin fall with the familiar first line and what is so rare as a day in June. Then if ever come perfect day then heaven tries the earth if it be in

tune and over it softly her warm ear lays. Whether we look good whether we listen we hear life murmur or see it glisten every clod feels a stir of might and instinct within it that reaches and towers and groping blindly above it for light climbs to US soil in grass and flowers. The flush of life may well be seen throwing back on the hills and valleys the cowslip startles in meadows green the buttercup catches the sun in its chalice and there's never a leaf nor a blade to mean to be some happy creatures powers that little bird sits at his door in the sun a tilt like a blossom among the leaves and lets his aluminum being or run with the deluge of summer it receives his mate feels the eggs beneath their wings and the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings he sings to the wide world and she to her nest in the nice ear of nature

which song is the best. Now is the high tide of the year and whatever of life has a bill way come flooding back with a Ripley's cheer into every bear in Littleton creek in the bay. Now the heart is so full that a drop over fills it. We are happy now because God wills it. No matter how barren the past may have been does enough for us now that the leaves are green. We sit in the warm shade and feel right well how the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell. We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing that skies are clear and grass is growing. The breeze comes whispering in our ear the dandelions are blossoming here that mazes from the streams are flowing but the river is blue in the sky that the robin is plastering his house hard by and if the breeze kept the good news back for other carriers we should not like we could get it all by yon heifers lowing. And hark how clear bold

Chanticleer warmed with the new wind of the year tells all in his last be crowing. Joy comes grief grows. We know not how. Everything is happy now everything is upward striving this is easy now for the heart to be true. As for grass to be greener skies to be blue is the natural way of living. Who knows whether the clouds of flat in the unscarred heaven they leave no wait and the eyes forget the tears they have shed the heart forgets that sorrow and the soul partakes the seasons you and the sulfurous rifts of passion and walleye deep beneath a silence pure and smooth like burnt out craters heeled snow. White wonder if certain fall Nol remembered the keeping of his vow. In March 1845 Henry David Thoreau rode on

28 to build a hut on the pine slope above the shores of Walden Pond near Concord Mass. The hut was 10 feet by 15. It cost twenty eight dollars and twelve and a half cents all told it lived there for two years feeding themselves largely by beans and potatoes which he raised in fish and berries. He recorded the experience in the book Walden or life in the woods. One of the finest most sensitive collections of narrative essays in the English language passages and epigrams selected at random from thorough in our New England notebook. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity then and there is silence nothing is so sure to make itself known as the truth. But what else way to be known. To take to tell the true one to tell it and one to hear it.

The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly. He who resists not at all will never surrender. He is the true artist whose life is as material. Is he not hospitable who entertains thoughts. Measure your help while you are simply with morning and spring. It is hard to part with one's body but no doubt it is easy enough to do without it when once it is gone. It is remarkable that the dead would lie everywhere under stones. A monument should at least be starry pointing to indicate whether the spirit is gone and not prostrate. Like the body it is deserted. Here lies here lie.

Why do they not sometimes write their rises. Is that a monument to the body only that is intended. Some weeks ago long I commented about and read the poem Old Ironsides by Oliver Wendell Holmes which is credited with saving the frigate Constitution from an ignominious watery grave. Holmes wrote the poem while a student at Harvard Harvard little realizing the future as a writer that lay beyond his studies in law and medicine both in this country and in Europe. Here this week rather than selections from his novels or breakfast table books is a selection from Holmes in an unaccustomed lighter mood almost a farcical kind of mood poem is called the height of the ridiculous. I wrote some lines once on a time in a wondrous merry mood and thought as

usual men would say their exceeding good. There was a queer so very queer high laugh that I would die albeit in the general way a sober man a man I called my servant and he came. How kind it was of him to mind a slender man like me. He of the mighty limb raised to the printer I exclaimed and in my humorous way I added as a trifling jest. You'll be the devil to pay. It took the paper and I watched it and saw him people with him at the first line he read his face was all upon the grin. He read the next. The grin grew broad and shot from ear to ear. He read the third chuckling noise and I began to hear the fourth. He broke into a roar. The fifth is waist band split the six they burst five buttons off and tumbled in a fit. Ten days and nights would sleep was on I watch that wretched man. And since I never dared to write as funny as I can.

In Pittsfield Massachusetts where I was born and raised I used to pass the hawthorn house where they said Nathaniel Hawthorne build many volumes of his notebooks and I used to wonder if perhaps the scarlet letter might have been written there. Can I just become acquainted with it about that time. Well it wasn't. It was written in Salem Massachusetts three years before he moved to Lenox my house which is six miles south of Pittsfield where he also wrote Tanglewood tales telling of a spot where he and his children went for picnics Tanglewood of course is now internationally known as the location of the Berkshire music festival. But I was talking about Hawthorne in the scarlet letter. In the third chapter of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter this and the House of Seven Gables are considered the masterpieces of this

brooding and critical spirit. Mr Prime is standing before the assembled crowd beside the prison on the platform of the pillory with her baby in her arms and wearing a rich dress with a scarlet A brighter and on its bosom. Her husband just arrived without notice to her is among the crowd. And this memorable scene follows when he found the eyes of Hester Prine fastened on his own and saw that she appeared to recognize him he slowly and calmly raised his finger made a gesture with it in the air and laid it on his lips then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood next to him he addressed them in a formal and courteous manner. I pray you observe that he who is this woman and wherefore she set up to public shame. You must need to be a stranger in this region friend else you would surely have heard of Mistress Esther pride and her evil doings. You have raised a great scandal I

promise you and godly master Dimsdale church yonder woman sir you must know was the wife of a certain learned man English by birth but would long grow old and I'm just a dime once some good Dymock gone he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with lots of Massachusetts for this purpose he sent his wife before him remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. Mary goods are in some two years or less that the woman has been a dweller here in Boston. No tidings of come of this learned gentleman master Prine and his young wife look you being left to her own guidance. On I consider views of the stranger with a bitter smile so learned a man as you speak of should have learned this too in his books and who by your favor sir may be the father of yonder babe. It is some three or four months old I should judge which Mr Bryan is holding in our arms or the truth from that matter many of

the riddles in the Daniel who shall expound it as yet a wanting. Item has absolutely refused to speak of the magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. Their adventure the guilty ones stand looking on at this sad spectacle unknown of mine and forgetting that God sees him. A learned man observe the stranger with another smile could come himself to look into the mystery. It behooves him well if he be still in life. Responded the townsmen. Now good server are Massachusetts Magister see. Be Thinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall and that moreover it is most likely her husband may be at the bottom of the sea. They have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our right just logon ster the penalty thereof is deaf but in their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed mistress prime to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory and then and thereafter for the remainder of her natural life where a mark of

shame upon her bosom. A wise sentence remarked the stranger gravely bowing his head. It is already been noticed that directly over the platform on which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony or open gallery appended to the meeting house here to witness the scene which we are describing so that Governor Bellingham himself with four sergeants about his chair the other eminent characters by whom the chief ruler was surrounded were distinguished by a dignity of mien belonging to a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions. They were doubtless good men just in Sage but out of the whole human family. It would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart and disentangling its measure of good and evil. The voice which had called her attention was that of the Reverend and famous John Wilson the oldest clergyman of Boston a great

scholar and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. The last attribute a lever had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts and he looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to all volumes of sermons. Esther Prine the clergyman I was driven with my young brother here under whose preaching of the word you have been privileged to sit here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man beside him. I am sought I say to persuade those godly you that he should do what you will here in the face of having them before these wise and upright rulers. But say you do it once again by the Dems they'll debate our rod that you'll deal with us boys when it was all there was a murmur among the dignified and reverent occupants of the balcony and Governor Bellingham give expression to its purport. Good Master Dimsdale said he. The responsibility of this woman's soul I greatly would you

it behooves you were therefore to exhort her to repentance and to confession as a proof and consequence thereof. The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the Rev. Mr. Dimsdale a young clergyman who had come from one of the great English universities running all the learning of the age into our wild forest land. He was a person a very striking aspect with a quite lofty and impending brow a large brown melancholy eyes and a mouth which unless he forcibly compressed it was apt to be tremulous expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint to the woman my brother and Mr. Wilson. It was a moment dorsal exhorter to confess the truth. The Rev. Mr. Dimsdale bent his head in silent prayers it seemed and then came forward. Mr Prime and he leading of the balcony and looking down steadfastly in the

arise. Now here is what this good man says and serious the accountability under which I labor if I am fearless to be for thy soul's peace and not by earthly punishment will thereby be made more effective will to salvation. I Jard they do speak out the name of Life fellow sinner and fellow sufferer. They don't silent for many mistaken pity and tenderness for him. But believe me Hester though he were to step down from a high in place and stand there beside the on Die pedestal of shame yet better were it so and to hide a guilty heart through life what can I silence do for it and accept it. Tempt him compel him as it were to add hypocrisy to say in heaven have granted the opening nominee and but there are by now almost worked out an Open triumph over the double what Indian the sorrow without. Take heed how deniers to

him but John suffer not the courage to grasp it for himself the bitter about a wholesome Cup that is now presented to the eye lips. The young pastor's voice who's come to slee sweet rich deep and broken the feeling that it manifested cause it to vibrate within all hearts and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy so powerful seeing the minister's appeal that the people could not believe but that Hester Prine would speak out the guilty name or else with the guilty one himself and whatever higher lonely place he stood would be drawn forth by an inward necessity and compelled to ascend the scaffold. Esther shook her head. When one transgressed not big on the limits of Heaven's mercy rod the Rev. Mr. Wilson more harshly than before. Speak out the name that about repentance may have failed to protect a scarlet letter off my breast. Never.

Replied Mr. Bryan looking not at Mr. Wilson but of a deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. It is too deeply branded. You cannot take it off and would that I might endure is I going to you as well as mine. Speak woman write another voice in the crowd coldly and sternly and proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold. Speak and get knocked out of bother. I will not speak. Answered Hester turning pale as death but responding to the voice which she surely recognised and my child must seek a Heavenly Father. You shall never know an earthly one. It will not be remembered Mr. Dimsdale who leaning over the balcony and awaited the result of his appeal. You now drew back with a long respiration. Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart.

She will not speak. We cannot leave our New England notebook without turning to a page or two devoted to that curious withdrawn hurrying likeness who lived in the huge foreboding house in Amherst Massachusetts. Miss Emily Dickinson of her shimmering fairy like poems than with books has written that they moved like bees upon a raft of air. And yet behind them one felt an energy of mind and spirit that only the rarest poets have it possessed. Where others merely glowed. She was incandescent. Here are five brief Dickinson poems from the notebook. Aspiration we never know how high we are to we are called to rise and then if we are true to plan our statures touch the skies the heroism

we were a sight would be a daily thing. Did not our souls the cubit Swart for fear to be a king portrait. A face devoid of love or grace. A hateful hard successful face to face with which a stone would feel as thoroughly at ease as were they old acquaintances first time thrown together. Experience I stepped from plank to plank so slowly and cautiously the stars above my head I felt about my feet the seat I knew not but the next would be my final image. This gave me that precarious gait. Some call experience. A poem numbered 9 15. I got so I could hear his name without tremendous gain. That

stopped some sation in my soul and funder in the room. I got so I could walk across that angle in the floor where he turned so I turn how and all our sin and tore. I got so I could stir the box in which his letters grew without any forcing in my breath and Staples driven through the dimly recollect the grace. I think they called it God. And one bearing the number eight look back on time with kindly eyes. The Douglas did his best and softly sinks his trembling son in human nature's Wes and so one closes his New England notebook with a sign from the many pages yet in turn.

I hope you'll be with me next week for the programme all about animals. Till then this is Dick verdict saying thanks for listening and so long. Listen to the land is produced and recorded at station W.H. y y Philadelphia under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio center and is being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. James Keeler speaking and biting you to join us one week from today for the program all about animals on the Listen to the land with their host and their writer Richard S. Burdick. This is the end AB Radio Network.