Let history and great men fade from our sight. Lately I have grown to be a sad rhymer, and shall end my letter with hints of a life sweeter than these records of mine. More and more I feel that my wine of letters is poured by the poets, not handed as cold sherbet by the philosophers. Some day I may speak more fully upon these things. Meanwhile, secretly and constantly, I turn over pebble after pebble upon the shore, not uncheered by the hope that one day a pearl may glitter in my hands. Even this smacks of history, for Clio had claimed this page.
LADY JANE GREY
Meek violet of History! there flows
A modest fragrance from thy maiden fame
Touched with the coolness of the chaste repose
Which broods o'er Plato's name.
No Wanderer through the dimly arched hall
Which Time has reared between thy date and ours
Meeting thy form, but sees that on its pall
Are broidered Grecian flowers.
Thy shrinking virgin fame is wed with one
Whose calm celestial teaching was thy King;
When sitting in that cloistered nook alone
Thou heardst the rude shout ring.
To thee that rabble shout foretold a scene
Of tearful splendor faded in its birth—
The melancholy mockery of a Queen—
And virgin dust to earth.
Ah! Princess of that golden classic hoard,
Thy need was other than an earthly crown;
But ours was such, for else couldst thou have poured
Through time thy pure renown?
For us thy blood was spilled; the whetted edge
Of that keen axe gave us one jewel more,
As a stream-drifted lily by chance sedge
Is held beside the shore.
Good-night. Let the remembrance of the
flowers still hold mine fast, and my solemn sweet
Milton shall sing my vespers too.
May you "move
In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft Recorders…."