| |
| PUT them in print? | |
| Make one more dint | |
| In the ages’ furrowed rock? No, no! | |
| Let his name and his verses go. | |
| These idle scraps, they would but wrong | 5 |
| His memory, whom we honored long, | |
| And men would ask: “Is this the best— | |
| Is this the whole his life expressed?” | |
| Haply he had no care to tell | |
| To all the thoughts which flung their spell | 10 |
| Around us when the night grew deep, | |
| Making it seem a loss to sleep, | |
| Exalting the low, dingy room | |
| To some high auditorium. | |
| And when we parted homeward, still | 15 |
| They followed us beyond the hill. | |
| The heaven had brought new stars to sight, | |
| Opening the map of later night; | |
| And the wide silence of the snow, | |
| And the dark whispers of the pines, | 20 |
| And those keen fires that glittered slow | |
| Along the zodiac’s wintry signs, | |
| Seemed witnesses and near of kin | |
| To the high dreams we held within. | |
| |
| Yet what is left | 25 |
| To us bereft, | |
| Save these remains, | |
| Which now the moth | |
| Will fret, or swifter fire consume? | |
| These inky stains | 30 |
| On his table-cloth; | |
| These prints that decked his room; | |
| His throne, this ragged easy-chair; | |
| This battered pipe, his councillor. | |
| This is the sum and inventory. | 35 |
| No son he left to tell his story, | |
| No gold, no lands, no fame, no book. | |
| Yet one of us, his heirs, who took | |
| The impress of his brain and heart, | |
| May gain from Heaven the lucky art | 40 |
| His untold meanings to impart | |
| In words that will not soon decay. | |
| Then gratefully will such one say: | |
| “This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine; | |
| The breath that gave it life was thine.” | 45 |
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