The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder :: :: University of Virginia Library

LOWELL

I

From the shade of the elms that murmured above thy birth
And the pines that sheltered thy life and shadowed the end,
'Neath the white-blue skies thee to thy rest we bore,—
'Neath the summer skies thou didst love, 'mid the songs of thy birds,
By thy childhood's stream, 'neath the grass and the flowers thou knewest,
Near the grave of the singer whose name with thine own is enlaureled,
By the side of the brave who live in thy deathless song,—
Here all that was mortal of thee we left, with our tears,
With our love, and our grief that could not be quenched or abated;
For even the part that was mortal, sweet friend and companion!
That face, and that figure of beauty, and flashing eye
Which in youth shone forth like a god's 'mid lesser men,
And in gray-haired, strenuous age still glowed and lustered,—
These, too, were dear to us,—blame us not, soaring spirit!
These, too, were dear, and now we shall never behold them,
Nor ever shall feel the quick clasp of thy welcoming hand.

206

II

But not for ourselves alone are we spent in grieving,
For the stricken Land we mourn whose light is darkened,
Whose soul in sorrow went forth in the night-time with thine.
Lover and laureate thou of the wide New World,
Whose pines, and prairies, and people, and teeming soil,
Where was shaken of old the seed of the freedom of men,
Thou didst love as a strong man loveth the maiden he woos,—
Not the woman he toys with, and sings to, and, passing, forgets,—
Whom he woos, whom he wins, whom he weds; his passion, his pride;
Who no shadow of wrong shall suffer, who shall stand in his sight
Pure as the sky of the evil her foeman may threat,
Save by word or by thought of her own in her whiteness untouched
And wounded alone of the lightning her spirit engenders.

III

Take of thy grief new strength, new life, O Land!
Weep no more he is lost, but rejoice and be glad forever
That thy lover who died was born, for thy pleasure, thy glory—
While his love and his fame light ever thy climbing path.

August 14, 1891.