Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems | Page 4

think of her!
Paris, half Angel, half Grisette,?I would that I were with thee yet,?But London waits me, like a wife,--?London, the love of my whole life.
Tell her not, Paris, mercy me!?How I have flirted, dear, with thee.
[1] By kind permission of the Editor of The Yellow Book.
ALFRED TENNYSON
(WESTMINSTER, OCTOBER 12, 1892)
Great man of song, whose glorious laurelled head?Within the lap of death sleeps well at last,?Down the dark road, seeking the deathless dead,?Thy faithful, fearless, shining soul hath passed.
Fame blows his silver trumpet o'er thy sleep,?And Love stands broken by thy lonely lyre;?So pure the fire God gave this clay to keep,?The clay must still seem holy for the fire.
Poor dupes of sense, we deem the close-shut eye,?So faithful servant of his golden tongue,?Still holds the hoarded lights of earth and sky,?We deem the mouth still full of sleeping song.
We mourn as though the great good song he gave?Passed with the singer's own informing breath:?Ah, golden book, for thee there is no grave,?Thine is a rhyme that shall not taste of death.
Great wife of his great heart--'tis yours to mourn,?Son well-beloved, 'tis yours, who loved him so:?But we!--hath death one perfect page out-torn?From the great song whereby alone we know
The splendid spirit imperiously shy,--?Husband to you and father--we afar?Hail poet of God, and name as one should cry:?'Yonder a king, and yonder lo! a star!'
So great his song we deem a little while?That Song itself with his great voice hath fled,?So grand the toga-sweep of his great style,?So vast the theme on which his song was fed.
One sings a flower, and one a face, and one?Screens from the world a corner choice and small,?Each toy its little laureate hath, but none?Sings of the whole: yea, only he sang all.
Poor little bards, so shameless in your care?To snatch the mighty laurel from his head,?Have you no fear, dwarfs in the giant's chair,?How men shall laugh, remembering the dead?
Great is advertisement! 'tis almost fate,?But, little mushroom-men, of puff-ball fame,?Ah, do you dream to be mistaken great?And to be really great are just the same?
Ah, fools! he was a laureate ere one leaf?Of the great crown had whispered on his brows;?Fame shrilled his song, Love carolled it, and Grief?Blessed it with tears within her lonely house.
Fame loved him well, because he loved not Fame,?But Peace and Love, all other things before,?A man was he ere yet he was a name,?His song was much because his love was more.
PROFESSOR MINTO
Nature, that makes Professors all day long,?And, filling idle souls with idle song,?Turns out small Poets every other minute,?Made earth for men--but seldom puts men in it.
Ah, Minto, thou of that minority?Wert man of men--we had deep need of thee!?Had Heaven a deeper? Did the heavenly Chair?Of Earthly Love wait empty for thee there?
March 1, 1893.
ON MR. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT
The world grows Lilliput, the great men go;?If greatness be, it wears no outer sign;?No more the signet of the mighty line?Stamps the great brow for all the world to know.?Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo!?Fragments and fractions of the old divine,?Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design,?Dapper and undistinguished--such we grow.
No more the leonine heroic head,?The ruling arm, great heart, and kingly eye;?No more th' alchemic tongue that turned poor themes
Of statecraft into golden-glowing dreams;?No more a man for man to deify:?Laurel no more--the heroic age is dead.
OMAR KHAYYáM
(TO THE OMAR KHAYYáM CLUB)
Great Omar, here to-night we drain a bowl?Unto thy long-since transmigrated soul,?Ours all unworthy in thy place to sit,?Ours still to read in life's enchanted scroll.
For us like thee a little hour to stay,?For us like thee a little hour of play,?A little hour for wine and love and song,?And we too turn the glass and take our way.
So many years your tomb the roses strew,?Yet not one penny wiser we than you,?The doubts that wearied you are with us still,?And, Heaven be thanked! your wine is with us too.
For, have the years a better message brought?To match the simple wisdom that you taught:?Love, wine and verse, and just a little bread--?For these to live and count the rest as nought?
Therefore, Great Omar, here our homage deep?We drain to thee, though all too fast asleep?In Death's intoxication art thou sunk?To know the solemn revels that we keep.
Oh, had we, best-loved Poet, but the power?From our own lives to pluck one golden hour,?And give it unto thee in thy great need,?How would we welcome thee to this bright bower!
O life that is so warm, 'twas Omar's too;?O wine that is so red, he drank of you:?Yet life and wine must all be put away,?And we go sleep with Omar--yea, 'tis true.
And when in some great city yet to be?The sacred wine is spilt for you and me,?To those great fames that we have yet to build,?We'll know as little of it