They say that thou art sick, art growing old,
Thou Poet of unconquerable health,
With youth far-stretching, through the golden wealth
Of autumn, to Death’s frostful, friendly cold;
The never-blenching eyes, that did behold
Life’s fair and foul, with measureless content,
And gaze ne’er sated, saddened as they bent
Over the dying soldier in the fold
Of thy large comrade love:—then broke the tear!
War-dream, field-vigil, the bequeathëd kiss,
Have brought old age to thee; yet, Master, now,
Cease not thy song to us; lest we should miss
A death-chant of indomitable cheer,
Blown as a gale from God;—Oh, sing it thou!
—Aaron Leigh
O pure heart singer of the human frame
Divine, whose poesy disdains control
Of slavish bonds! each poem is a soul,
Incarnate born of thee, and given thy name.
Thy genius is unshackled as a flame
That sunward soars, the central light its goal;
Thy thoughts are lightnings, and thy numbers roll
In Nature’s thunders that put art to shame.
Exalter of the land that gave thee birth,
Though she insult thy grand gray years with wrong
Of infamy, foul-branding thee with scars
Of felon-hate, still shalt thou be on earth
Revered, and in Fame’s firmament of song
Thy name shall blaze among the eternal stars!
—Leonard Wheeler
O Titan soul, ascend your starry steep,
On golden stair, to gods and storied men!
Ascend! nor care where thy traducers creep.
For what may well be said of prophets, when
A world that’s wicked comes to call them good?
Ascend and sing! As kings of thought who stood
On stormy heights, and held far lights to men,
Stand thou, and shout above the tumbled roar,
Lest brave ships drive and break against the shore.
What though thy sounding song be roughly set?
Parnassus’ self is rough! Give thou the thought,
The golden ore, the gems that few forget;
In time the tinsel jewel will be wrought.
Stand thou alone, and fixed as destiny,
An imaged god that lifts above all hate;
Stand thou serene and satisfied with fate;
Stand thou as stands the lightning-riven tree,
That lords the cloven clouds of gray Yosemite.
Yea, lone, sad soul, thy heights must be thy home;
Thou sweetest lover! love shall climb to thee
Like incense curling some cathedral dome,
From many distant vales. Yet thou shalt be,
O grand, sweet singer, to the end alone.
But murmur not. The moon, the mighty spheres,
Spin on alone through all the soundless years;
Alone man comes on earth; he lives alone;
Alone he turns to front the dark unknown.
—Joaquin Miller
I knew there was an old, white-bearded seer
Who dwelt among the streets of Camden town;
I had the volumes which his hand wrote down—
The living evidence we love to hear
Of one who walks reproachless, without fear.
But when I saw that face, capped with its crown
Of snow-white almond-buds, his high renown
Faded to naught, and only did appear
The calm old man, to whom his verses tell,
All sounds were music, even as a child;
And then the sudden knowledge on me fell,
For all the hours his fancies had beguiled,
No verse had shown the Poet half so well
As when he looked into my face and smiled.
—Linn Porter
Friend Whitman! wert thou less serene and kind,
Surely thou mightest (like the bard sublime),
Scorned by a generation deaf and blind,
Make thine appeal to the avenger TIME;
For thou art none of those who upward climb,
Gathering roses with a vacant mind.
Ne’er have thy hands for jaded triflers twined
Sick flowers of rhetoric and weeds of rhyme.
Nay, thine hath been a Prophet’s stormier fate.
While LINCOLN and the martyr’d legions wait
In the yet widening blue of yonder sky,
On the great strand below them thou art seen,
Blessing, with something Christ-like in thy mien,
A sea of turbulent lives, that break and die.
—Robert Buchanan