University of Virginia Library

Twelve years ago, if he had died,
His critic friends had surely cried:
“Death does us wrong, the fates are cross;
Nor will this age repair the loss.
Fine was the promise of his youth;
Time would have brought him deeper truth.
Some earnest of his wealth he gave,
Then hid his treasures in the grave.”
And proud that they alone on earth
Perceived what might have been his worth,
They would have kept their leader's name
Linked with a fragmentary fame.
Forsooth the beeches knotless stem,
If early felled, were dear to them.
But the fair tree lives on, and spreads
Its scatheless boughs above their heads,
And they are pollarded by cares,
And give themselves religious airs,
And grow not, whilst the forest-king
Strikes high and deep from spring to spring.
So they would have his branches rise
In theoretic symmetries;
They see a twist in yonder limb,
The foliage not precisely trim;
Some gnarlèd roughness they lament,
Take credit for their discontent,
And count his flaws, serenely wise
With motes of pity in their eyes;
As if they could, the prudent fools,
Adjust such live-long growth to rules,
As if so strong a soul could thrive
Fixed in one shape at thirty-five.
Leave him to us, ye good and sage,
Who stiffen in your middle age.
Ye loved him once, but now forbear;
Yield him to those who hope and dare,
And have not yet to forms consigned
A rigid, ossifying mind.

One's feelings lose poetic flow
Soon after twenty-seven or so;
Professionizing moral men
Thenceforth admire what pleased them then;
The poems bought in youth they read,
And say them over like their creed.
All autumn crops of rhyme seem strange;
Their intellect resents the change.
They cannot follow to the end
Their more susceptive college-friend:
He runs from field to field, and they
Stroll in their paddocks making hay:
He's ever young, and they get old;
Poor things, they deem him over-bold:
What wonder, if they stare and scold?