He and his dusky braves
So fain of glorious graves!-
One instant stood, and then
Drave through that cloud of purple steel and flame, Which wrapped him, held him, gave him not again, But in its trampled ashes left to Fame
That was indeed to live-
At one bold swoop to wrest
From darkling death the best
That death to life can give.
He fell as Roland fell
That day at Roncevaux,
With foot upon the ramparts of the foe!
A pæan, not a knell,
For heroes dying so!
No need for sorrow here,
No room for sigh or tear,
Save such rich tears as happy eyelids know.
See where he rides, our Knight!
Within his eyes the light
Of battle, and youth's gold about his brow;
Our Paladin, our Soldier of the Cross,
Not weighing gain with loss—
World-loser, that won all
Obeying duty's call!
Not his, at peril's frown,
A pulse of quicker beat;
Not his to hesitate
And parley hold with Fate,
But proudly to fling down
His gauntlet at her feet.
O soul of loyal valor and white truth,
Here, by this iron gate,
Thy serried ranks about thee as of yore,
Stand thou for evermore
In thy undying youth!
The tender heart, the eagle eye!
Oh, unto him belong
The homages of Song;
Our praises and the praise
Of coming days
To him belong
To him, to him, the dead that shall not die! Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907]
AH, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!
But you were living before that,
And also you were living after;
And the memory I started at-
My starting moves your laughter!
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A molted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
Robert Browning [1816-1889]
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
[1850-1894]
In his old gusty garden of the North,
He heard lark-time the uplifting Voices call;
Smitten through with Voices was the evenfall-
At last they drove him forth.
Now there were two rang silverly and long;
And of Romance, that spirit of the sun,
And of Romance, Spirit of Youth, was one;
And one was that of Song.
Gold-belted sailors, bristling buccaneers,
The flashing soldier, and the high, slim dame,
These were the Shapes that all around him came,—
That we let go with tears.
His was the unstinted English of the Scot,
Clear, nimble, with the scriptural tang of Knox
Thrust through it like the far, sweet scent of box,
To keep it unforgot.
No frugal Realist, but quick to laugh,
To see appealing things in all he knew,
He plucked the sun-sweet corn his fathers grew,
And would have naught of chaff.
David and Keats, and all good singing men,
Take to your heart this Covenanter's son,
Gone in mid-years, leaving our years undone,
Where you do sing again!
Lizette Woodworth Reese [1856
BAYARD TAYLOR
[1825-1878]
"AND where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?" My sister asked our guest one winter's day. Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way Common to both: "Wherever thou shalt send! What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed, Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow: "Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft." "All these and more I soon shall see for thee!" He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge,
And Tromsö freezing in its winter sea.
He went and came. But no man knows the track
Of his last journey, and he comes not back!
He brought us wonders of the new and old;
We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent
To him its story-telling secret lent,
And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told.
His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure,
In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought;
From humble home-lays to the heights of thought
Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure.
How, with the generous pride that friendship hath,
We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown
Of civic honor on his brows pressed down,
Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death.
And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears
Two nations speak, we answer but with tears!
O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft,
Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let
Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget,
Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft;
Let the home voices greet him in the far,
Strange lands that hold him; let the messages
Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas
And unmapped vastness of his unknown star!
Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse
Of perishable fame, in every sphere
Itself interprets; and its utterance here
Somewhere in God's unfolding universe
Shall reach our traveler, softening the surprise
Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies!
John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892]
LACRIME MUSARUM
[ALFRED TENNYSON, 1809-1892]
Low, like another's, lies the laureled head:
The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er:
Carry the last great bard to his last bed.
Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute.
Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore
Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore,
Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit,
Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread,
The master's feet shall tread.
Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute:
The singer of undying songs is dead.
Lo, in this season pensive-hued and grave,
While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leaf
From withered Earth's fantastic coronal,
With wandering sighs of forest and of wave
Mingles the murmur of a people's grief
For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall.
He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers
For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame,
And soon the winter silence shall be ours:
Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame
Crowns with no mortal flowers.
What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears,
To save from visitation of decay?
Not in this temporal light alone, that bay
Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears
Sings he with lips of transitory clay.
Rapt though he be from us,
Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus;
Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each
Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach;
Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach;
Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home;
Keats, on his lips the eternal rose of youth,
Doth in the name of Beauty that is Truth
A kinsman's love beseech;
Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam,
Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave,
His equal friendship crave:
And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech
Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome.
Nay, he returns to regions whence he came. Him doth the spirit divine
|