St. Augustine's Holiday and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

As when at night we tread the lonely deck,
In the first hour of moonlight on the wave,
Far, far away, the watcher marks some streak
Which dying day hath pencill'd o'er his grave:

So more than living lights, beyond all fair,
In living genius, is departed worth—
Man's spirit makes love-tokens of whate'er
Hath come from genius now no more on earth.

As in a gold-clasp'd volume closely hid,
The pale, pale leaves of some remember'd rose,
Dating the heart's deep chronicles unbid,
Suggest more thought than all which greenly grows;

As in the winter, from some marble jar,
Whose sides are honey'd with a rosy breath,
You catch faint footfalls of the spring afar,
And find a memory in the scent of death:

So these, the characters of Butler's pen,
Are more to us than all that, day by day,
Are traced by mightiest hands of living men,—
T'is death that makes them more esteem'd than they.

176

'Tis not because the affluent fancy flung
Such pearls of price ungrudging at thy feet,
'Tis not because that blessèd poet sung
His Heavenly Master's truth in words so sweet:

No; 'tis because the heavy churchyard mould
Lies on the dear one in that lonely dell—
Lies on the hand that held the pen of gold,
The brain that thought so wisely, and so well.

Nay, say not so;—write epitaphs like these
For sons of song who fling light words abroad,
Whose art is canker'd with a sore disease,
Who feed a flame that tends not up to God.

But he, the empurpled cross with healing shadow
Was the great measure of the much he knew;
'Twas this he saw on mountain, and on meadow,
The only beautiful, the sternly true.

Not vague to him the great Laudate still
Stirring the strong ones of the waterflood,
And the deep heart of many an ancient hill,
And light-hung chords of every vocal wood;—

Not dark the language written on the wide
Marmoreal ocean—written on the sky,
On the scarr'd volume of the mountain side,
On many-pagèd flowers that lowly lie;—

Nor dark, nor vague; not Nature, but her God;
Nor only Nature's God, but Three in One,
Father, Redeemer, Comforter—bestow'd
On hearts made temples by the Incarnate Son.

177

All sweetest strains rang hollow to his ear,
Wanting this key-note; earthy, of the earth,
Seeming like beauty to the eye of fear,
Like the wild anguish of a harlot's mirth.

True Poet, true Philosopher—to whom
Beauty was one with truth, and truth with beauty;
True Priest, no flowers so sweet upon thy tomb
As those pure blossoms won from rugged duty.

He might have sung as precious songs as e'er
Made our tongue golden since its earliest burst,
But those poetic wreaths him seem'd less fair
Than moral truth o'er science wide dispersed.

He might have read man's nature deeper far
Than any since his broad-brow'd namesake died,
But like those Eastern Sages, so the star
He follow'd—till he found the cradle side.

And now, ye mountains and ye voiceful streams!
For your interpreter ye need not weep;
On the eternal hills fall brighter gleams,
Through Eden more delightful rivers sweep.

Friends, kinsmen, fellow-chruchmen, fellow-men,
Yes, ye may weep, but be it not for him.
Life might have brought him larger lore—what then?
It would have kept him from the seraphim.

Dear hand, dear lines, in them still undeparted
Tokens I see of one before the Throne,—
Butler the child-like, and the tender-hearted,
Taken so young by Him who takes His own.