TO VERNON L. KELLOGG
’Tis well, that man is slow to cry “Alas!”—
That Nature’s heart seems eager to atone
For music often ending in a moan
By silence tender with the peace it has;
But ever, as on morning ways I pass,
I see the fields with hints of terror sown—
A tuft of fur, or small and bleaching bone,
Or heap of little feathers in the grass.
How fares it with the lesser wards of life?—
Always they seem so restless, so alert.
Is fear to them an unrelenting care—
The spirit of that dumb and ravenous strife
No Power will justify and none avert?
And in the deep—’tis well we see not there!
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD
O Muse! within thy western hall,
To mellow chord and crystal string,
At many harps thy chosen sing:
His was the gentlest soul of all.
He sang not as the leaping faun
By voiceless rivers cool and clear,
Nor yet as chants the visioned seer
When darkness trembles with the dawn.
A milder music held his lyre—
A wistful strain, all human-sweet,
Between the ashes at our feet
And stars that pass in alien fire.
His skies were sombre, but he lit
His garden with a lamp of gold,
Where tropic laughters left untold
The sadness buried in his wit.
Lonely, he harbored to the last
A boyish spirit, large and droll;
Tardy of flesh and swift of soul,
He walked with angels of the Past.
With tears his laurels still are wet;
But now we smile, whose hearts have known
The fault that harmed himself alone,—
The art that left a world in debt.