| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | IV. To B. T. | | By Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) |
| | (With a copy of the Iliad)
BAYARD, awaken not this music strong, | |
| While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze | |
| Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas | |
| O’er which Ulysses heard the Sirens’ song! | |
| Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong, | 5 |
| And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease; | |
| But later, when these high ancestral trees | |
| Are sear, and such Odyssean languors wrong | |
| The reddening strength of the autumnal year, | |
| Yield to heroic words thine ear and eye: | 10 |
| Intent on these broad pages thou shall hear | |
| The trumpet’s blare, the Argive battle-cry, | |
| And see Achilles hurl his hurtling spear, | |
| And mark the Trojan arrows make reply. | | | | |
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