IN ITHACA.
“And now am I greatly repenting that ever I left my life with thee, and the immortality thou didst promise me.”—Letter of Odysseus to Calypso. Luciani Vera Historia.
’Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o’er
With all the waves and wars, a weary while,
Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,
And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,
Go down the ways of gold, and evermore
His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,
Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,
Calypso, and the love that was of yore.
Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet
To look across the sad and stormy space,
Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,
Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,
Because, within a fair forsaken place
The life that might have been is lost to thee.
HOMER.
Homer, thy song men liken to the sea
With all the notes of music in its tone,
With tides that wash the dim dominion
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isles enchanted; nay, to me
Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown
That glasses Egypt’s temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally.
No wiser we than men of heretofore
To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast;
Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,
As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast
His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore
Of gods dethroned, and empires in the past.
THE BURIAL OF MOLIÈRE.
(AFTER J. TRUFFIER.)
Dead—he is dead! The rouge has left a trace
On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,
Even while the people laughed that held him dear
But yesterday. He died,—and not in grace,
And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace
To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear,
And gold must win a passage for his bier,
And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.