GATHERED BY
Ralph A. Lyon
EVANSTON
William S. Lord
1902
She comes like the hushed beauty of the night,
But sees too deep for laughter;
Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.
Poetry? Can I define it, you inquire?
Yes; by your pleasure,
Poetry is Thought, in princeliest attire,
Treading a measure.
Spring, the low prelude of a lordlier song;
Summer, a music without hint of death:
Autumn, a cadence lingeringly long:
Winter, a pause;—the Minstrel-Year takes breath.
All the World’s bravery that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestow’st,
Thy nimble Pencil paints this landscape as thou go’st.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved, and next to nature, art.
I warm’d both hands before the fire of life:
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
As a shaft that is sped from a bow unseen to an unseen mark,
As a bird that gleams in the firelight, and hurries from dark to dark,
As the face of the stranger who smiled as we passed in the crowded street,—
Our life is a glimmer, a flutter, a memory, fading, yet sweet!
Nature, a jealous mistress, laid him low.
He woo’d and won her; and, by love made bold,
She showed him more than mortal man should know,
Then slew him lest her secret should be told.
No puissant singer he, whose silence grieves
To-day the great West’s tender heart and strong;
No singer vast of voice: yet one who leaves
His native air the sweeter for his song.
We have no high cathedral for his rest,
Dim with proud banners and the dust of years;
All we can give him is New England’s breast
To lay his