TOUCH HIM NE’ER SO LIGHTLY.
“Touch him ne’er so lightly, into song he broke:
Soil so quick-receptive,—not one feather-seed,
Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke
Vitalizing Virtue: song would song succeed
Sudden as spontaneous—prove a poet-soul!”
Indeed?
Rock’s the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare:
Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage
Vainly both expend,—few flowers awaken there:
Quiet in its cleft broods—what the after age
Knows and names a pine, a nation’s heritage.
These lines appeared first as the Epilogue to the second series of Dramatic Idyls, published in 1880. In October of the same year, the poet wrote, in the Album of a young American lady, a sequel to them, which appeared (in fac-simile) in the Century Magazine of November, 1882. They are given here, with the kind consent of the publishers of that magazine:—
Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters,
Poets dead and gone: and lo, the critics cried
“Out on such a boast!”—as if I dreamed that fetters
Binding Dante, bind up—me! as if true pride
Were not also humble!
So I smiled and sighed
As I ope’d your book in Venice this bright morning,
Sweet new friend of mine! and felt tho’ clay or sand—
Whatsoe’er my soil be,—break—for praise or scorning—
Out in grateful fancies—weeds, but weeds expand
Almost into flowers, held by such a kindly hand!