The lion's cub :: :: University of Virginia Library

When poets touch the heart, they touch
To finer issues than the brain
Conceives of either joy or pain;
And their sweet influence is such
As comes to buds with vernal rain.

Sculpture may satisfy the eye
With lines of grandeur or of grace;
Painting restore the hour, the place,
When tranced with wood, or wave, or sky,
We stood with Nature face to face.

And Music—all that spells of sound,
Enamoured of melodious speech,
Rejoice in, calling, answering each,
Music may bring; but more profound
Than these the arts that poets teach.

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Their Art is Nature. They divine
Her secrets, and to man disclose;
They taught, or teach, him all he knows,
First, last, of the prophetic line,
And what he is, and where he goes.

Of many men and many things
Forgetful, priests that shape his creed,
Stout men-at-arms that make him bleed,
He still remembers him who sings,
Who was, and is, his friend indeed.

Green was the laurel Cæsar wore,
But Virgil's wreath is greener now
Than Cæsar's; that imperial brow
Is balder than it was before,
Powerless; but, Horace, not so thou.

A Queen and player both drew breath
In good old England's golden prime:
To-day the sovereign of that time
Is Shakespeare, not Elizabeth,
Not Tudor, but his powerful rhyme.

What homage shall we offer these,
Our Masters, and their deathless song?
Pay them the honors that belong
To founders of great dynasties
The strong hands that destroy the strong;

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Build monuments to them beside
Earth's mighty ones, their mightiest;
Visit the spots that knew them best,
The houses where they lived and died,
The graves wherein their ashes rest.

Master! The monument we raise
Is other than these piles of stone.
Builded by Nature's hands alone,
Before thee all thy length of days,
'Tis near thee now that thou art gone.

Poet of Nature! Thou to her
Wast dearest of this Western race;
And she whom thou wast first to trace,
Discoverer and worshipper—
She folded thee in her embrace!

A child, she led thee hand in hand,
To watch the grassy rivulet flow,
Where still the yellow violets grow,
And still the tall old forests stand,
Though that was ninety years ago.

What monument so fit as these,
Which never from their poet's heart
Were absent—in the noisy mart,
Or in strange lands beyond the seas,
Where still he walked with them apart?

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Bring these! O bring the forest trees
From Cummington to Roslyn now!
He would be glad to know they bow
Above him in the summer breeze,
And have their shadows on his brow.

Memorial in Cathedral vast
He needeth none, nor requiem, save
The music of the wind and wave;
Least such a song as this I cast
Like a poor wild flower on his grave.