HENRY ABBEY [11.138]

Henry Abbey

(EEUU, 1842-1911)

Poeta estadounidense nacido en 1842 y fallecido a principios de la segunda decena del siglo XX, en cuya obra se advierte la notable influencia de los poetas James Henry Leigh Hunt, Shelley y Coleridge. Entre sus obras cabe citar los poemarios Historias en verso (Stories in Verse, 1869), Poemas (Poems, 1879) y La ciudad del éxito y otros poemas (The city of success and other poems, 1883).

¿Qué hemos plantado cuando plantamos un árbol?

¿Qué hemos logrado cuando plantamos un árbol?

Plantamos la nao que cruzará el mar;

plantamos los lápices para garabatear nuestras notas;

plantamos las papeletas para emitir nuestros votos;

plantamos el papel en que leeremos

las noticias que se expanden rápidamente sobre postes de madera,

plantamos las pilas para levantar nuestros muelles;

plantamos la seda para las camisas y los calcetines.

¿Qué hemos logrado cuando plantamos un árbol?

Plantamos las casas para ti y para mí;

Plantamos las vigas del techo, las tejas, los pisos,

Plantamos el entramado, la malla, las puertas,

las vigas y paredes, todas las partes que sean;

Plantamos la casa cuando plantamos el árbol,

Plantamos el cañón, el cajón, la caja;

en las cuales enviar todo tipo de mercancías.

¿Qué hemos logrado cuando plantamos un árbol?

Un millar de cosas que vemos a diario,

Plantamos la columna que eleva la simiente,

Plantamos la vara para nuestra bandera nacional;

Plantamos la sombra para el ardiente y libre helios,

Plantamos todo esto cuando plantamos un árbol. 

''What do we plant when we plant the tree? 

We plant the ship that will cross the sea, 

We plant the mast to carry the sails, 

We plant the planks to withstand the gales— 

The keel, the keelson, and beam and knee— 

We plant the ship when we plant the tree.''

Henry Abbey (1842-1911), U.S. poet. "What Do We Plant?"

Agnes Hatot

When might made right in days of chivalry,

Hatot and Ringsdale, over claims of land,

Darkened their lives with stormy enmity,

And for their cause agreed this test to stand:

To fight steel-clad till either's blood made wet

The soil disputed; and a time was set.

But Hatot sickened when the day drew near,

And strength lay racked that once had been his boast.

Then Agnes, his fair daughter, for the fear

That in proud honor he would suffer most,

Resolved to do the battle in his name,

And leave no foothold for the tread of Shame.

She, at the gray, first coming of the day,

Shook off still sleep, and from her window gazed.

The west was curtained with night's dark delay;

A cold and waning moon in silence raised

It's bent and wasted finger o'er the vale,

And seemed sad Death that beckoned, wan and pale.

But Hope sails by the rugged coasts of Fear;

For while awakened birds sang round her eaves,

Our Agnes armed herself with knightly gear

Of rattling hauberk and of jointed greaves;

Withal she put on valor, that to feel

Does more for victory than battle-steel.

She had a sea of hair, whose odor sweet,

And golden softness, in a moonless tide

Ran rippling toward the white coast of her feet;

But as beneath a cloud the sea may hide,

Son in her visored, burnished helmet, there,

Under the cloud-like plume, was hid her hair.

Bearing the mighty lance, sharp-spiked and long,

She at the sill bestrode her restless steed.

Her kneeling soul prayed God to make her strong,

And prayer is nearest path to every need.

She clattered on the bridge, and on apace,

And met dread Ringsdale at the hour and place.

They clash in onslaught; steel to steel replies;

The champed bit foams; rider and ridden fight.

Each feels the grim and brutal instinct rise

That in forefront of havoc takes delight.

The lightning of the lances flashed and ran,

Until, at last, the maid unhorsed the man.

Then on her steed, she, bright-eyed, flushed, and glad,

Her helmet lifted in the sylvan air;

And from the iron concealment that it had,

The noiseless ocean of her languid hair

Broke in disheveled waves: the cross and heart,

Jewels that latched her vest, she drew apart.

'Lo, it is Agnes, even I!' she said,

'Who with my trusty lance have thrust thee down!

For hate of shame the fray I hazarded;

And yet, not me the victory should crown,

But God, the Merciful, who helps the right,

And lent me strength to conquer in the fight.' 

Autumn Ballad

How mild and fair the day, dear love! and in these garden ways

The lingering dahlias to the sun their hopeless faces raise.

The buckwheat and the barley, once so bonny and so blithe,

Fall before the rhythmic labor of the cradler's gleaming scythe.

Behold the grapes and all the fruits that Autumn gives today,

As robed in red and gold, she rules, the Empress of Decay!

Out to the orchard come with me, among the apple trees;

No dragon guards the laden boughs of our Hesperides.

This golden pear, my darling, that I hold up to your mouth,

Is a hanging-nest of sweetness; but the birds are winging south.

The purses of the chestnuts, by the chilly-fingered Frost,

Were opened in his frolic, and their triple hoards are lost.

Last night you heard the tempest, love-the wind-entangled pines,

The spraying waves, the sobbing sky that lowered in gloomy lines;

The storm was like a hopeless soul, that stood beside the sea,

And wept in dismal rain and moaned for what could never be 

Eleusinia

The sun-bronzed Arabs, living at the base

Of Karnak's mighty ruin, see in it

The work of no man's hand. They cannot think

Its lofty beauty and majestic form,

So awe-begetting, even in decay,

Are the unaided deed of their own kind.

But, as most men are wont, when sharply faced

By problems that they do not understand,

The squalid Arabs, quite too ignorant

To seek in natural causes for a key,

Exalt their case to the miraculous

And supernatural, and so believe

That monstrous genii, in antiquity,

To please the holder of some magic ring,

Built Karnak in a night!

All governments,

Books, customs, buildings, railways, ships, and all

The stark realities that men have made,

Are but imagination's utterances.

The invisible speaks in the visible,

And over all, the high, far-reaching thoughts

Of great imaginations domineer.

First of the Magi, Zoroaster yet

Colors the Western theosophic mind,

Besides the minds of Asian myriads.

Nor have his genii lost hold on men;

But are an explanation, in the East,

Of architectural victories, which appear

Beyond the power of human hands to win.

But we, of higher credence, think not so.

Of larger literature and ampler range,

We know the same full-browed intelligence,

The same Masonic wisdom, that upreared

High-girdled Babylon and purple Tyre

And built the Temple of King Solomon,

Built also the sepulchral Pyramids,

Build Philæ, hundred-gated Thebes, and all

Those works stupendous, whose calm grandeur yet

Shows the departed glory of the Nile.

It scarce seems longer past than yesterday

That men undid the brazen clamps which held

Upon its pedestal the Obelisk-

That ray-like shaft, which Thutmes raised at On

To grace the Temple of the Setting Sun-

And found Masonic emblems there bestowed.

Such useful emblems have been found withal

In prehistoric ruins Mexican.

If other clue were needed to connect

Our modern Craft with builders of the past,

We have the evidence of what we know,-

That nothing can be operative long

And not be speculative too; for Use

Is more than manual. Intelligence

Must see the ideal in the real, and clothe

Upon the impalpable and naked truth

The palpable resemblance; it must needs

Behold in all that is material,

External, the express embodiment,

Or signature, of far more lasting things,

Which are internal, spiritual.

Swedenborg,

Upon the other worlds of heaven and hell,

His ideality imposed, and strove

To picture them, the universe and God,

Using the splendid words of holy writ

As signs and tokens of the mysteries

That, in imagination, he beheld.

But not so far the wise Freemason dares.

In square and compasses, in setting-maul,

And in the other stated working-tools

Used by the Craft, he sees an ideal use.

To him they are the emblems of such things

As have been found alike in every soul

And make the world fraternal.

Symbolism

Is the rich blood and life of Masonry.

A symbol is the solid link between

The real and the ideal. It must be

That man himself, the crown of earthly things,

Made in his Maker's image, is the true,

The only symbol of the Power Divine.

It follows that sublime Freemasonry

And heaven-born, strong-pinioned Poetry

Are one at heart; for, whatsoever be

Sincere, commensurate, symbolical,

Is native of the Muse-her work. To think

In symbols is imagination's house.

So the fast hold which Masonry has kept

Upon the minds of men for centuries-

For long millenniums-is, in truth, the same

As that of Poetry. For Poetry

Drank from the fountain of immortal youth,

Then rose in beauty, like the Morning Star,

And lit the holy, intellectual fire,

Guide of our faith and practice, that is laid

Upon Masonic altars.

When expressed

In buildings she is seen, as in the tree

The hamadryad, we but change her name,

And Architecture nominate the Muse.

But the broad tenets, on whose soil is based

Our Ancient Order, are a fertile land,

And all the arts and sciences alike

Find in it healthful sustenance, and, nursed

In genial sunshine and condensate dew,

Burst into bloom and yield abundant fruits.