At Sunset :: :: University of Virginia Library

Walk at their funeral, woman lone,
They have thrilled at your grief and moan.
Wits of all ages, counsellors, kings!
Your thoughts to them were familiar things.
Bane of men's evilness, virtue sublime,
Beauties of childhood, gathered in rhyme,
With this sad pageant their ministry ends.
These were your guardians, these were your friends!
Who shall precede you with dutiful feet?
Who shall intone for you melodies sweet?
No one inherits your magical song
That to all ages, all climes doth belong.
Great ones salute you from out the dim past,
Bards of the centuries, fashioned to last.
Homer and Dante and Shakespeare may say:
Souls of our temper are with us to-day.

[N. B. These lines were scrawled, almost illegibly, in the Pullman, on my way, I think, to Fresno, Cal.

Hearing that Browning had died in Venice, the following lines came to me, and were scribbled in like manner, before seeing any account of the procession which they in a manner prefigure.]

Methought I saw our poet's funeral pass
Like a mysterious vision in a glass.
Hearsed in a gondola his ashes lay,
While smiled on him the bright Venetian day,

And silence waited on the bargeman's oar,
Listening for glorious song that comes no more.

The ancient palaces, so primly white,
Did seem to have their sorrow in the sight;
While “in a balcony” lovers and Queen
Persist in acting out their mimic scene,
Scarce heeding when the poet's dust floats by,
Except to say: “Die thou—we need not die.”
The barks fly past, for pleasure, profit, sin,
Urged by some eager hand their goal to win.
For haste thy rowers' muscles are not strained,
No need to hurry now—thou hast attained.
But in thy track a flight of loosened doves,
Other than those thy Venice feeds and loves,
Make plaintive music with their tender call.
Who are ye then, ye creatures slight and small?
What place in this sad festival have ye?
“We're the song-spirits that his verse did free.
The earth shall hide his dust, for which you grieve,
But in his song a better earth shall live.”