"Rather be dead than praised!" Shall we,
Who loved thee, now that Death sets free
Thine eager soul, with word and line
Profane that empty house of thine?
Nay,—let us hold, be mute. Our pain
Will not be less that we refrain;
And this our silence shall but be
A larger monument to thee.
VICTOR HUGO.
He set the trumpet to his lips, and lo!
The clash of waves, the roar of winds that blow,
The strife and stress of Nature's warring things,
Rose like a storm-cloud, upon angry wings.
He set the reed-pipe to his lips, and lo!
The wreck of landscape took a rosy glow,
And Life, and Love, and gladness that Love brings
Laughed in the music, like a child that sings.
Master of each, Arch-Master! We that still
Wait in the verge and outskirt of the Hill
Look upward lonely—lonely to the height
Where thou has climbed, for ever, out of sight!
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
EMIGRAVIT, OCTOBER VI., MDCCCXCII.
Grief there will be, and may,
When King Apollo's bay
Is cut midwise;
Grief that a song is stilled,
Grief for the unfulfilled
Singer that dies.
Not so we mourn thee now,
Not so we grieve that thou,
Master, art passed,
Since thou thy song didst raise,
Through the full round of days,
E'en to the last.