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(6th October, 1892)
LOW, like another’s, lies the laurelled head: | |
| The life that seemed a perfect song is o’er: | |
| Carry the last great bard to his last bed. | |
| Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. | |
| Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore | 5 |
| Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild seashore, | |
| Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, | |
| Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, | |
| The master’s feet shall tread. | |
| Death’s little rift hath rent the faultless lute: | 10 |
| The singer of undying songs is dead. | |
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| Lo, in this season pensive-hued and grave, | |
| While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leaf | |
| From withered Earth’s fantastic coronal, | |
| With wandering sighs of forest and of wave | 15 |
| Mingles the murmur of a people’s grief | |
| For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall. | |
| He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers. | |
| For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame, | |
| And soon the winter silence shall be ours: | 20 |
| Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame | |
| Crowns with no mortal flowers. | |
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| Rapt though he be from us, | |
| Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus; | |
| Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each | 25 |
| Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach; | |
| Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach; | |
| Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home; | |
| Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech; | |
| Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam, | 30 |
| Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave, | |
| His equal friendship crave: | |
| And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech | |
| Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome. | |
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| What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears, | 35 |
| To save from visitation of decay? | |
| Not in his temporal sunlight, now, that bay | |
| Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears | |
| Sings he with lips of transitory clay; | |
| For he hath joined the chorus of his peers | 40 |
| In habitations of the perfect day: | |
| His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears, | |
| And more melodious are henceforth the spheres, | |
| Enriched with music stolen from earth away. | |
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| He hath returned to regions whence he came, | 45 |
| Him doth the spirit divine | |
| Of universal loveliness reclaim. | |
| All nature is his shrine. | |
| Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea, | |
| In earth’s and air’s emotion or repose, | 50 |
| In every star’s august serenity, | |
| And in the rapture of the flaming rose. | |
| There seek him if ye would not seek in vain, | |
| There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole; | |
| Yea, and forever in the human soul | 55 |
| Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain. | |
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| For lo! creation’s self is one great choir, | |
| And what is nature’s order but the rhyme | |
| Whereto the worlds keep time, | |
| And all things move with all things from their prime? | 60 |
| Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? | |
| In far retreats of elemental mind | |
| Obscurely comes and goes | |
| The imperative breath of song, that as the wind | |
| Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. | 65 |
| Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, | |
| Extort her crimson secret from the rose, | |
| But ask not of the Muse that she disclose | |
| The meaning of the riddle of her might: | |
| Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, | 70 |
| Save the enigma of herself, she knows. | |
| The master could not tell, with all his lore, | |
| Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped: | |
| Even as the linnet sings, so I, he said;— | |
| Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, | 75 |
| That held in trance the ancient Attic shore, | |
| And charms the ages with the notes that o’er | |
| All woodland chants immortally prevail! | |
| And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, | |
| He with diviner silence dwells instead, | 80 |
| And on no earthly sea with transient roar, | |
| Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail, | |
| But far beyond our vision and our hail | |
| Is heard forever and is seen no more. | |
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| No more, O never now, | 85 |
| Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow | |
| Whereon nor snows of time | |
| Have fallen, nor wintry rime, | |
| Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime. | |
| Once, in his youth obscure, | 90 |
| The maker of this verse, which shall endure | |
| By splendor of its theme that cannot die, | |
| Beheld thee eye to eye, | |
| And touched through thee the hand | |
| Of every hero of thy race divine. | 95 |
| Even to the sire of all the laurelled line, | |
| The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand, | |
| With soul as healthful as the poignant brine, | |
| Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas, | |
| Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine, | 100 |
| Glorious Mæonides. | |
| Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet: | |
| Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget? | |
| The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue, | |
| Are they not ever goldenly imprest | 105 |
| On memory’s palimpsest? | |
| I see the wizard locks like night that hung, | |
| I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod; | |
| I see the hands a nation’s lyre that strung, | |
| The eyes that looked through life and gazed on God. | 110 |
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| The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer; | |
| The grass of yesteryear | |
| Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: | |
| Empires dissolve and peoples disappear: | |
| Song passes not away. | 115 |
| Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, | |
| And kings a dubious legend of their reign; | |
| The swords of Cæsars, they are less than rust: | |
| The poet doth remain. | |
| Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive; | 120 |
| And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime, | |
| Like Virgil shalt thy race and tongue survive, | |
| Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time, | |
| Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, | |
| And rich with sweets from every Muse’s hive; | 125 |
| While to the measure of the cosmic rune | |
| For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, | |
| And heed no more the hum of idle praise | |
| In that great calm our tumults cannot reach, | |
| Master who crown’st our immelodious days | 130 |
| With flower of perfect speech. | |
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