 | Poems and Songs |  |
82
A Natal Lay.
“Let me sing a Birth-day Ode!”Thus does each adorer cry
When this natal day draws nigh.
Should Apollo deign to nod,
Straight is raised the frenzied eye—
Spins the humming top of rhyme
All about this natal time.
But when I my boon besought
Grave Apollo nodded not,
And, alas! I well could see,
All the Muses stared at me,
And the whispered wonder came,
“What is this aspirant's name?”
Down my head in sorrow hung,
And the Ode remains unsung,
Sitting then with soul subdued
To a vexed and fretful mood,
“Why,” I said, “an Ode at all,
That may flat as snow-flakes fall?
83
Of a eulogistic strain—
Setting one within the maze
Of an oft-repeated praise,
Round and round to toil astray
On a feastful natal day?—
While his peers impatient sit
Longing till electric wit
Forth shall leap with flash divine
‘'Mong the walnuts and the wine.’
Till the ‘Ode’ again achieved
Leaves their tortured ears relieved?
Nay, although it fell not flatly,
As a snow-flake falls, but patly
Touched the temper of the time,
And in warm and lofty rhyme
Told again the well-known story—
What increase were there of glory
To the Bard whose songs to-night
Shall the gravest cares make light?”
So, imagined be the strain
That should tell you o'er again
How the man we meet to honour
84
How he loved, and how men loved him;
How the test of trouble proved him;
How the fervour of his pen
Thrilled, and thrills the souls of men;
How he woke by rill and river
Echoes that will ring for ever;
How, whate'er he stopped to name
Shares the marvel of his fame;
How, of him it may be said,
“Nothing that he touched is dead;”
How, although detractors cry
“Much that he has touched should die;”
Yet, where'er his foot has been,
Plodding pilgrims aye are seen,
Who believe there yet remains
A gleaning of ungathered grains—
Verses bold and warblings sweet—
Which shall make his fame complete.
Thus, in an imagined strain,
Each may tell the tale again,
In the pause of speech and song,—
Or fancy-led may roam among
85
Logan Water, Doon, in Kyle,
The Banks of Ayr, or Afton Braes.
And where'er the fancy strays,
Singing bird or blossomed sod
Be the subject of an Ode—
Each one musing as he may,
On the Bard we praise to-day.
| Poems and Songs | |