Personal Poems II, vol 4, part 2 | Page 7

heart were fair guest-chambers,?Open to sunrise and the birds;
The task was thine to mould and fashion?Life's plastic newness into grace?To make the boyish heart heroic,?And light with thought the maiden's face.
O'er all the land, in town and prairie,?With bended heads of mourning, stand?The living forms that owe their beauty?And fitness to thy shaping hand.
Thy call has come in ripened manhood,?The noonday calm of heart and mind,?While I, who dreamed of thy remaining?To mourn me, linger still behind,
Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding,?A debt of love still due from me,--?The vain remembrance of occasions,?Forever lost, of serving thee.
It was not mine among thy kindred?To join the silent funeral prayers,?But all that long sad day of summer?My tears of mourning dropped with theirs.
All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow,?The birds forgot their merry trills?All day I heard the pines lamenting?With thine upon thy homestead hills.
Green be those hillside pines forever,?And green the meadowy lowlands be,?And green the old memorial beeches,?Name-carven in the woods of Lee.
Still let them greet thy life companions?Who thither turn their pilgrim feet,?In every mossy line recalling?A tender memory sadly sweet.
O friend! if thought and sense avail not?To know thee henceforth as thou art,?That all is well with thee forever?I trust the instincts of my heart.
Thine be the quiet habitations,?Thine the green pastures, blossom-sown,?And smiles of saintly recognition,?As sweet and tender as thy own.
Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow?To meet us, but to thee we come,?With thee we never can be strangers,?And where thou art must still be home.?1863.
BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY
Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated by a festival to which these verses were sent.
We praise not now the poet's art,?The rounded beauty of his song;?Who weighs him from his life apart?Must do his nobler nature wrong.
Not for the eye, familiar grown?With charms to common sight denied,?The marvellous gift he shares alone?With him who walked on Rydal-side;
Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay,?Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears;?We speak his praise who wears to-day?The glory of his seventy years.
When Peace brings Freedom in her train,?Let happy lips his songs rehearse;?His life is now his noblest strain,?His manhood better than his verse!
Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys?Its cunning keeps at life's full span;?But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these,?The poet seems beside the man!
So be it! let the garlands die,?The singer's wreath, the painter's meed,?Let our names perish, if thereby?Our country may be saved and freed!?1864.
THOMAS STARR KING
Published originally as a prelude to the posthumous volume of selections edited by Richard Frothingham.
The great work laid upon his twoscore years?Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears,?Who loved him as few men were ever loved,?We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan?With him whose life stands rounded and approved?In the full growth and stature of a man.?Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,?With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!?Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down,?From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!?Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell?Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell?That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.?O East and West! O morn and sunset twain?No more forever!--has he lived in vain?Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told?Your bridal service from his lips of gold??1864.
LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.
I need not ask thee, for my sake,?To read a book which well may make?Its way by native force of wit?Without my manual sign to it.?Its piquant writer needs from me?No gravely masculine guaranty,?And well might laugh her merriest laugh?At broken spears in her behalf;?Yet, spite of all the critics tell,?I frankly own I like her well.?It may be that she wields a pen?Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men,?That her keen arrows search and try?The armor joints of dignity,?And, though alone for error meant,?Sing through the air irreverent.?I blame her not, the young athlete?Who plants her woman's tiny feet,?And dares the chances of debate?Where bearded men might hesitate,?Who, deeply earnest, seeing well?The ludicrous and laughable,?Mingling in eloquent excess?Her anger and her tenderness,?And, chiding with a half-caress,?Strives, less for her own sex than ours,?With principalities and powers,?And points us upward to the clear?Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.
Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause?To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws,?Or waste my pity when some fool?Provokes her measureless ridicule.?Strong-minded is she? Better so?Than dulness set for sale or show,?A household folly, capped and belled?In fashion's dance of puppets held,?Or poor pretence of womanhood,?Whose formal, flavorless platitude?Is warranted from all offence?Of robust meaning's violence.?Give me the wine of thought whose head?Sparkles along the page I read,--?Electric words in which I find?The tonic of the northwest wind;?The wisdom which itself allies?To sweet and pure humanities,?Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong,?Are underlaid by love as strong;?The genial play of mirth that lights?Grave themes of thought,