So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 10 Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 15 -He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering, not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us,-not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,-while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire; 20 Then let him receive the new knowledge With resolute shoulders, each butting and wait us, away Pardoned in heaven, the first by the The haze, as some bluff river headland its throne! spray: Then shortened each stirrup, and set the As down on her haunches she shuddered How go on your flowers? None double? 45 There's a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails: If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off to hell, a Manichee! Or, my scrofulous French novel On gray paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in't? 50 55 60 "Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! Then I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies God's child with his dew we twine round its chords On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noonstill living and blue tide those sunbeams like swords! 35 And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one, So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 40 Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand 50 And grow one in the sense of this world's life. And then, the last song When the dead man is praised on his journey-"Bear, bear him along With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. 54 Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!" And then, the glad chaunt Of the marriage,-first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt |