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Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  1048 The Dead Player

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Robert BurnsWilson

1048 The Dead Player

SURE and exact,—the master’s quiet touch,

Thus perfect, was his art;

Ambitious, generous, sad, and loving much,

Was his pain-haunted heart.

To him, the blissful burthen of her love

Did stern-browed Fortune give;

In hell, in heaven, beneath life and above,

Such souls as his must live.

Who wears Fame’s Tyrian garb, as well must wear

The heavy robe of Grief;

Who bears aloft the palm, must also bear

Hid woundings past belief.

Both he did wear and bear, as well as most

Of Earth’s soon-counted few

That stand distinguished from the unknown host

By having work to do.

Souls seek their doom. A costly-freighted bark

That sails a perilous sea,

Rounds every bar, and goes down, in the dark

At port,—e’en such was he.

A classic shade,—he walks the unknown lands

Death-silent and death-dim;

But, like a noble Phidian marble, stands

The memory of him.